


Good Omens Prompt Fills

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2019-11-07 01:41:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 42,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17951210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: The ratings will vary, I guess if warnings ever become pertinent I'll add those... Various prompted ficlets and snippets, I can tell you right now focused almost entirely on Aziraphale and Crowley, from various prompts various places.





	1. Some Do It With a Bitter Look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the fandomweekly challenge 'schadenfreude'.

    There’s a small volume of poetry on the countertop, which Crowley picks up. He’s not normally fidgety, or he doesn’t like to think of himself as fidgety, but he feels fidgety now. He’s just located Aziraphale’s current place, having realized it’s been a hundred years or so since last they met, and he’d been hoping for more of a welcome than the distracted ‘oh’ he’d gotten. The angel had had the temerity to simply ignore him!

 

    He’s not sure what he’d been hoping for, exactly. A hundred years isn’t exactly a long time, they’d known each other for thousands, they’d often gone longer than a mere century without seeing each other, but…

 

    But lately they’d been keeping to the same places. Not on accident, as it so often seemed to happen, but purposefully. Hadn’t it been on purpose? It wasn’t something they discussed, but he’d thought it was something they settled into for practical reasons, and because…

 

    Because humans are interesting, but you can’t have a real conversation with one. You can’t have a real conversation with hardly anyone-- he doesn’t want to socialize with other demons, most of them aren’t particularly evil at all but they aren’t particularly interesting, either. He doubts Aziraphale has better luck calling on his own compatriots.

 

    So he’d thought he rated better than ‘oh’, and to be completely ignored. He finds himself fidgeting with the book and pockets it to avoid temptation-- not that avoiding temptation is an area he has much experience in. Aziraphale flutters from shelf to shelf to pile of books and back again and doesn’t even look at him.

 

    “You haven’t asked how I’ve been.” Crowley says pointedly.

 

    “Haven’t I? It’s only been... ninety-five years, is it? My dear boy, you shall have to excuse me, I’ve had a simply awful turn of the century.”

 

    “Oh?” His own attention perks up at that. Of course it’s too much to hope that he might say ‘it’s been dreadfully dull with no one to thwart, and you mustn’t disappear like that for more than eighty years at a time at most’. But still.

 

    “It’s been very difficult. But what have you been up to?”

 

    “Slept, mostly.” He admits, and Aziraphale makes one of those theatrically wounded noises of his.

 

    “But how galling I shouldn’t ask you! Well I hope you had a fine nap, Crowley, I really do, because it’s been a very terrible time here!” He flounces about, like a puffed-up songbird. Even without his wings out, Crowley can just imagine his wings all mussed and fluffed and irritated-looking. “I’ve been having just the worst day since eighteen hundred and ninety five and it really hasn’t let up since!”

 

    “Do tell, then. Do you actually have customers, is that the problem? Has religion fallen out of favor? Did they stop dancing the gavotte?”

 

    “I do, it hasn’t, and they have, thank you. You’re enjoying this!”

 

    He is. A little. But he’s a demon, he’s supposed to enjoy this. He thinks. And anyway, Aziraphale gets so entertainingly bent out of shape over the little things sometimes…

 

    “Of course I’m not, you wound me.”

 

    “Lying serpent. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, you’re a wicked thing with no feeling for others. My own fault for letting you in.”

 

    “You didn’t let me in.”

 

    “Generally speaking, then.”

 

    He poses a bit, one hand on his hip, the backs of his knuckles pressed to his lips in a picture of anguish, but he doesn’t really know anguish. Even on Earth, he’s a piece of Heaven, he can’t truly experience some depths. Even humans live in Grace. Every mortal soul has the chance right up until a soul’s snapped up, provided a deathbed profession of faith is more than a cop-out… they know agony, and despair at times, more than he thinks an angel might. Back when he was one, he certainly never knew those things, they hadn’t existed yet.

 

    “And what’s worst, I can’t get my books in order and I only just set my _Ballad_ down…”

 

    This is the stupidest thing Crowley’s ever heard. All the misery he’s seen-- all the misery he’s caused-- and Aziraphale’s on the verge of tears over a misplaced…

 

    Oh.

 

    “This one?”

 

    “You had it all along?” He looks downright prepared to smite, at that.

 

    “Only a moment. Is it good? Mind, I only read wicked books…”

 

    “There’s no such thing as a wicked book!” Aziraphale scolds, snatching it from him. “Wicked souls may take wholly different meanings from a book than a good one might! There is nothing at all wicked about this one, or any of them. They-- they’re quite lovely! They’re quite _moral_!”

 

    “Nevermind, then.” Crowley rolls his eyes, and wonders if Aziraphale can tell he’s doing it. The overdramatic sod… He’s fond of him, yes, but sometimes the angel tests his patience, wittering on so. As if there had been some great war or abomination, but he’d have heard about something of that nature happening in the past five years or so, if there had been. He’s been awake long enough he’d know that.

 

    “Alas! It is a fearful thing to feel another’s guilt!” He exclaims, shelving the slim volume. Whatever in he-- in hea-- in someplace that means. And then, he collapses gracefully to a low pouf that might not have been there before, eyes wet. “We’re not allowed favorites.”

 

    “Suppose not.”

 

    “He was generous, and kind, and he did put his mind to the glory of the Almighty… and at times I thought… I know we’re not allowed favorites. It would have been so easy to spare him, and yet…”

 

    Oh. Oh, dear. He’d gone and gotten attached to a mortal, then. They never last very long, best not to. But in Crowley’s case it was a matter of saving yourself pain. In Aziraphale’s, you weren’t allowed to intercede for your own special favorites.

 

    “There, there, angel.” He tuts, mortified to find he regrets his earlier glee. “Let’s have a drink, shall we?”


	2. Every First Kiss We've Had

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the Pratchett kink meme and the prompt for Aziraphale and Crowley's first kiss. I couldn't decide on when and how exactly, but honestly they probably argue about what counts as a First Kiss...

-I-

 

     Kissing had yet to be invented, by a few days. Days hadn't quite been invented, for that matter, though Words had been spoken, and so there would certainly be days and they'd figure out what it all meant in time.

  
     There was light. It was quite relaxing, and watching it happen was the only thing there really was to do, beyond singing praise and glory and all. Mostly it was relaxing, and then something somewhere would go BANG, and then it would be relaxing again, watching all the little bits of it form, watching more and more light come into being, and all the little things that come into being orbiting the various lights, if you went in for that.

  
     Crowley wasn't Crowley then-- he'd had another name, which it would pain him to think back on later. He'd been quite different in most ways. This was before anything, when it was just all of them watching the light, and singing praise and glory every time there was an interesting bit. Before the rebellion, and before his own... Before everything, they'd all more or less hung about together, the angels. Oh, some of the higher orders were clique-ish, and some angels formed particular friendships, sometimes based upon knowing what duties were to come and who might serve more closely with whom, sometimes just randomly.

  
     Aziraphale was random chance. It was only that Aziraphale wasn't clique-ish, that moreover, he didn't really fit in with the other Principalities. He didn't fit any more than the angel who would be Crowley did. And so when skulking around the outskirts listening to the Virtues discuss the coming Creation grew dull, he would seek Aziraphale out, and watch the light with him a while, and ask him what he thought it would be like.

  
     Aziraphale never did presume to know, but he was keen to think of his own duties, preferred the thought of being educator and guide to this new class of being to the thought of having to be in charge of other angels.

  
     Well, then of course the whole idea of a new class of being didn't go over terribly well, there were some didn't even want to see what they'd be like, only hated that they'd be the new favorite, and the angel who would be Crowley didn't quite take that position. He didn't envy mankind in quite the same way, he didn't hate them. He envied them in his own way, the idea of a being that was just... there to be. A thing that would simply live, and perhaps it would praise, but it wouldn't have a duty to, it would just... be. It would just explore something made for it to enjoy! Of course he envied that, but it filled him with a curious sort of love, where it filled others with hate. A deep desire to see what the new thing would be like, though it would not be his own duty to watch over this Man.

  
     He asked Aziraphale once if maybe he could join him. It had made Aziraphale nervous, he'd tittered and shushed him. And so the angel who even after the Fall was not yet Crowley had reached out his wing, just enough for his feathers to brush against Aziraphale's, to feel a thrill at the touch, some beyond-primal energy flowing between them just for the split second of contact-- if, indeed, split seconds had existed, which they hadn't.

  
     He wasn't sure Aziraphale noticed it.

 

-II-

 

     "Oh, you poor creature!"

  
     Aziraphale's voice flutters, high and worried. Aziraphale's hands are gentle, lifting him up. It doesn't feel like they ought to be able to. He oughtn't fit into the crook of an arm, oughtn't be able to wind his body around Aziraphale's this way, oughtn't...

  
     But he doesn't think about it very hard, because his head is pounding, and it's the first cold day in Eden.

  
     the Man doesn't seem cold, Adam. The first time the thing which would be Crowley woke, he'd been so cold he ached through to the core of him, but Adam had been traipsing through the garden naked as you please, hadn't even looked at him.

  
     Aziraphale is blessedly warm, and he touches the thing which would be Crowley's brow with his fingertips, a gentle benediction-- no, a gentle affection.

  
     The thing which would be Crowley's eyes flutter open, and though Aziraphale has never in his life needed to breathe, he gasps.

  
     He actually drops the thing which would be Crowley, who slithers to the ground, without the strength to keep hold of him.

  
     "Demon!" Aziraphale gasps again, and so he looks around.

  
     "What? Where?"

  
     "I mean you, you great pillock! What are you doing here?"

  
     Him? Since when? Still, a cursory self-examination shows he is not what he once was, and the cold that only he feels... Well, it won't be cold where he supposes he's going, or at the very least the act of smiting is bound to be fiery, but it's all very confusing.

  
     "No, no-- no, I can't be." He shakes his head. He presses his face against Aziraphale's foot, only for said foot to be yanked away. "You know me, Aziraphale!"

  
     "I most certainly do not!"

 

     "I'm--" He starts, and the name won't come. "I'm your brother!"

  
     It's the best he can do. But he can't ask Aziraphale to wonder-- as far as Aziraphale knows, he was killed during the rebellion, or else duty has separated them now that creation has expanded. For all he knows, the angel Crowley used to be is off directing the movement of the orbs in some far corner of the universe, or singing in the choir, or merely acting as a conduit for holy energies. Second Sphere stuff, only he'd abandoned his Sphere entirely for Aziraphale's-- not for Aziraphale himself, but to see what the world was and what Man was and to experience the full and heady pleasure of Paradise...

  
     He was never meant to be here. Aziraphale won't know him.

  
     He clumsily tries again, only it's awkward with his lips gone, but he hopes it's enough to show his mouth is closed and teeth well away, that he's doing no harm, that he...

  
     He doesn't know. It's a new gesture, but Adam goes about making it with every creature, and they all seem to understand it means something about friendship and love, when he pushes his face against the forehead of this great beast or that. The wolves seem to like it and the lions either find it very tolerable or are too lazy to protest, and the ox and the lamb and the zebra and the dove all just sort of sit dumbly and allow this funny creature to press his mouth to them in all earnest kindness.

  
     "Oh, you poor creature." Aziraphale says again, but it's not fluttering and worried. It's thick with pity first, and distantly, disgust.

 

-III-

 

     For some reason, Aziraphale never did smite him.

  
     He'd rather risk a smiting while wandering the earth than toil in Hell proper, which still feels cold to him much of the time, but he no longer wishes for the alternative. He's heard the screams.

  
     It's all well and good to speak of ruling in Hell, but in Crowley's experience, they all just torment each other, all find it awful, whether it feels too cold or too hot or some other terrible thing. No one enjoys Hell, but everyone who chose it is committed to pretending they do. Sunk Cost Fallacy, and all. Crowley didn't rebel with the rest of them, and so he's allowed to say it stinks, he supposes, but it does make him the lowest of the low.

  
     He's worked out changing his form, at least, to limited success. It was a doozy of a thing to get his limbs back after the rather unpleasant experience of having them pushed back into his body only to sort of disappear in there. Hard to describe, and harder to endure, and he'd spent a long time after slithering. But that was the nice thing about being a serpent, one supposes, you can slither.

  
     The eyes are what they are, but he has a human form, a human face. He's young and handsome, posing as a blind traveler-- he can see easily enough through the strip of cloth across his eyes, but no one else can see in.

  
     Aziraphale's changed, since he was relieved of gatekeeping duties. He's taken on a softer shape, smaller. Crowley still recognizes him immediately, his essence is unchanged. He is as he always was, since before the world was new-- and the world is still fairly new. To humans, he's unobtrusive, unseen, as he slips through their different settlements, performing the right number of miracles.

  
     Crowley hadn't had his form perfected, last they'd seen each other, but neither had Aziraphale-- oh, Aziraphale's form had been perfect, but he didn't care for that. For attracting attention, for looking beautiful and strong and young. Crowley had had to pose as some new kind of leper, and hope no one looked at the scaly patches, and Aziraphale had been flustered to be looked at at all, had whispered to him in a dark street while the city slept, that he didn't see how he could get any miracles done this way.

  
     Now, Aziraphale approaches him where he leans against the wall, a basket in hand. Not that he needs money, he obtains what he likes by his own means anyway, but a blind beggar with a small basket, one or two coins in it, it allows him his own unobtrusive place from which to orchestrate little disasters.

  
     He expects to be lectured. He was lectured last time, as if he was to blame for all the wickedness in the city. He half wished he had been. Demonic wickedness is more palatable than the purely human variety.

  
     Aziraphale beckons him with a quiet whisper, and so he follows him down an alleyway, into a quiet doorway.

  
     "Keep your eyes closed a moment." Aziraphale says. "And trust me."

  
     Crowley does. Aziraphale has always been sort of nice to him, even if he doesn't recognize him as an old friend. Even if he never particularly had feelings of friendship for Crowley beyond what he felt for everyone else. It was one thing to feel one had a more harmonious association with some angels than with others, but it was different to have a real and serious favorite, perhaps. To feel for someone something separate and special. He wonders sometimes if that had been part of the trouble, with him.

  
     But he doesn't think Aziraphale is going to hurt him, and so he holds still and keeps his eyes closed as Aziraphale unties the cloth from over them. And then, Aziraphale's lips brush gently across one eyelid and then the other, and Crowley is burned as if lightning has lanced straight through him.

  
     It's the first time in a long time he's felt good.

  
     It's painful, of course. It's a miracle, it's holy, holiness hurts demons, but it hurts so good.

  
     It hurts, in another, stranger, stronger way, to realize that Aziraphale had been as taken in as any human by his disguise.

  
     "Oh, my dear--" Aziraphale gasps and catches him before his legs can go out from under him-- stronger than his vessel would appear, but that's only natural. "Oh-- oh, dear, you?"

  
     "Can I open them?" Crowley asks weakly.

  
     "I thought-- Well, you looked so different! Oh, dear, maybe you'd best not just yet, you-- you're smoking..."

  
     "Do it again." He grins, loose and punch-drunk with the strength of that mercy. That Grace.

  
     "If I'd been trying to heal something more difficult than blindness, I'd have smote you!" Aziraphale tuts, distressed. Crowley cracks one eye open, just a little, to take him in, and closes it again. "You said you were going east, after that last bad business."

  
     "I know. Funny old world."

  
     Aziraphale hums, disapproving, but his lips ghost across Crowley's closed eyes once more, sans miracle.

  
     "I really didn't mean to. I suppose I ought to have! But I really didn't, dear."

  
     "No harm done, angel." Crowley touches his cheek.

  
     "It's just as well, I'm at my limit for miracles this quarter, so if this one didn't count that's for the best. I just... you looked so-- It seemed wrong not-- Well. Well, and now you've learned your lesson about pretending to be a poor blind man! So I shall... I shall let them know you've been thwarted! And... I expect it's only fair if you do something to have been thwarted for, isn't it?"

  
     "That is how it goes. Ideally." He chuckles. It's new, this whole idea of working around each other, they haven't quite tested it yet, but...

  
     "Nothing too terrible!"

  
     "Something exactly terrible enough for what you've put me through." He grins.

  
     Aziraphale flounces off.

 

-IV-

 

     The lamps are blown out, everyone goes still. A hushed whisper runs around the room, the question of whether they're safe, of whether someone is about to burst in and round them all up and if they'll all see two years' hard labor.

  
     Crowley slips through the crowd easily, winding his way between frightened pairs and clusters. Well, he doesn't need the lamplight to see, though he does-- rather annoyingly-- need to lift his glasses now and then.

  
     He locates Aziraphale, who could see in the dark if he'd a mind to, but who seems to be content to calmly wait it out. If anyone did come through the door with an eye towards carting everyone within to gaol, Crowley imagines they'd leave empty-handed after a few words from Aziraphale. He denies it, but he'd called down a rather intense fit of divine ecstasy onto a policeman the last time his gentlemen's club was raided, and not only did all the gentlemen escape unmolested, the policeman left his position for a monastery somewhere.

  
     Underhanded, but Aziraphale had only sniffed and said it was his job, ecstasy, and why not a policeman? It had nothing to do with protecting or not protecting anyone.

  
     He leans in and kisses him, purely on impulse.

  
     "Oh-- I'm afraid you've mistaken me for-- That is to say, I don't--" Aziraphale whispers hurriedly. "I mean it's very kind of you to-- Or it's very--"

  
     "No mistake, angel." Crowley grins, a bit of a hiss wending its way into his tone. "Surprise."

  
     "Oh, you!" Aziraphale shoves him off, scowling. "Wicked old thing, thought you'd come and have a laugh?"

  
     "Do men make the mistake of kissing you often?"

  
     "They're very polite about it and don't accost me without asking. Kisses are exchanged politely and chastely at the appropriate times, between the appropriate people, I certainly am not kissed all over creation!" He hisses-- the effect is rather different from when Crowley does it.

  
     "Can I help it if you're fun to rile up?" He straightens Aziraphale's lapel, and the carnation in his buttonhole.

  
     "What are you doing here?"

  
     "Just slumming, I guess." Crowley sighs. He wasn't searching for the angel. Wasn't... Hadn't any personal stake in finding him or in kissing him. He'd known when he'd done it that Aziraphale would sputter and shove him away, what other reason could he have had for kissing him in the first place?

  
     "I resent that remark."

  
     "I bring a little good news for you and your friends, while I'm at it. The police wagon that startled Alfred won't come here, there's been a bank robbery just uptown, I expect they're all going to be quite involved with it. So."

  
     Crowley grins, for Aziraphale's eyes only before the lamps are lit. There's a momentary whiff of sulfur when he lights the one in Aziraphale's hand, though no match struck. It's rarely worth doing, tempting someone into robbing a bank. Boring. But... well. He does have a job to do, after all.

  
     "Let there be light." He says, and he slips away.

 

-V-

 

     They're walking along, under the moonlight, after the apocalypse that wasn't, when quite suddenly, Aziraphale seizes him.

  
     This... this kiss is not a prayer, a benediction, a comfort, an apology, or a joke. It might just be a miracle.

  
     This kiss is not chaste. It's too carnal to be angelic, too tender to be demonic. It is a kiss forged over six thousand years and whatever was before there were years to count. It is a very earthly kiss.

  
     "What was that for?" Crowley asks dizzily. He wants the answer badly enough to resist diving right back in for another go at this proper kissing, but only just.

  
     "I just... I ought to have." Aziraphale answers, helpless. He swallows, his hold on Crowley shifts. He looks at him, with a lost, longing sort of a question of his own. "I ought to have. Before it-- before it all... When we were ready to... I ought to have kissed you then, thinking we might be destroyed completely, thinking it was the end of it all but at least we were going out as a team. I ought to have kissed you."

  
     "Why didn't you?"

  
     "Somehow, the idea you might not... might not want me to, struck me as rather more terrifying than the end of the world."

  
     "Angel." Crowley laughs, and kisses him again, much more briefly. "Have I ever not wanted you to?"

  
     He thinks it's a very good point, and evidently, Aziraphale agrees.


	3. The Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the DW prompt 'Aziraphale teaching someone else to gavotte (likely while Crowley groans in the background)'

     "Oh, it's really quite simple, the gavotte!" Aziraphale exclaims, and Crowley rolls his eyes behind his smoked lenses.

  
     Whenever he drops in on Aziraphale, he hears about his dancing lessons and his gentleman's club... it all seems dreadfully boring and more than a bit silly. What Crowley has picked up about dancing, he considers to be far more interesting than whatever a gavotte might be-- a gavotte, if Aziraphale does it, is not a very exciting thing.

  
     He's perched on the counter of Aziraphale's current shop, one he's been especially fond of, fonder than a lot of places they've been. He's hoped to be particularly irritating, but after only a bit of huffing, he'd been ignored in favor of a customer, of all things, and now Aziraphale plans on using the very small space in which two people can reasonably move, for a dance lesson.

  
     "I apologize, normally one has a spacious dance floor, but I can give you the idea!" He continues, to his patron, his guest.

  
     The gavotte is... surprising.

  
     Crowley didn't expect it to involve kissing. He's definitely going to have to keep a closer eye on his angel for the next millennium or two... Well, not 'his' angel, no, but...

  
     But the ridiculous silly sod, too innocent to realize the sort of... Of course, Aziraphale always did live a bit behind the times, probably still remembered when you'd kiss a stranger as a matter of course when met as a traveler. An innocent greeting, in his mind, passed between two men without a thought. But how many men did he kiss in this gentlemen's club? And with no idea he might be innocently facilitating temptation!

  
     Crowley's not sure whether he ought to tell him or not. Tell him, stop him doing it, laugh at him a bit for his error... Spare him the embarrassment and allow him to keep on facilitating temptation? No. At least it's safe to assume Aziraphale himself has never had a thought towards the potential for temptation, or he wouldn't do it. Asking for a Fall, being tempted by mortalkind like that, Crowley knows a few demons who went that way. Aziraphale's not the type, and somehow Crowley's glad of it. After all, if Aziraphale were to Fall, he'd only have to deal with some new Heavenly operative, and he doesn't want that, and...

  
     And you get used to it after a time. Well, no. You don't. You get used to Hell, because demons as a rule have little imagination, really, and even then he's glad to spend as little time there as possible, but... You don't get used to the separation. He sees humans get through life with ailments which never heal and thinks they know what it is, a bit. You might not think much about it every minute of every day, but the pain of it's always there. The lack of Grace is an old war wound you forget about until the weather turns and it aches you anew.

  
     Crowley watches Aziraphale dance, and laugh, and politely kiss his customer, a little old man who also laughs rather a lot over the whole thing, and he feels the ache. He wouldn't wish it on anybody, he certainly wouldn't wish it on Aziraphale, but there's selfishness at play, too. Because when he's near his counterpart, and when Aziraphale allows himself to bubble over with joy or with that sort of Heavenly love of all Creation, if Crowley were to reach out and touch him, he'd feel a whisper of it.

  
     He's cut off, and there's no undoing it, he's not sure exactly when the tether between him and all things holy finally snapped-- he'd been so distracted when it had grown thready and weak, had been so caught up in the idea of these brand new creatures upon the Earth, and he'd been learning to sleep, and eat, and he'd discovered a feeling which was like love only for the first time in his existence it had been something small and private, and he'd felt it for something or someone or somethings and someones other than his creator, and...

  
     And then he'd discovered rather suddenly that he was no longer an angel, but he might have been walking around in shock and wounded for all he knows, for days-- back when days were new.

  
     "How come you never taught me to gavotte?" He asks, when Aziraphale's customer goes, having conveniently forgotten to buy any books.

  
     "I offered to teach you thrice!" Aziraphale motions for him to hop down from the counter. "You said you didn't want to learn and you made fun of me for having done."

  
     "Well, teach me now." Crowley says, and Aziraphale sighs, but he does it.

  
     Aziraphale doesn't know temptation... Crowley shall tell him over dinner, perhaps, that the social norms on kissing have changed. But Crowley does, and he is sorely tempted, for just a fleeting taste of Grace.


	4. Groomed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a DW prompt for wingfic. And as this is the only fandom where I'm into wingfic...
> 
> This is the only one that gets NSFW so far. So if that isn't your thing, fair warning! It's not super explicit but it's, you know. A thing.

     Aziraphale shivers. The nice thing about their secluded little rest overlooking the sea is the garden-- with a blanket spread out on the grass and tall hedges around them, and no one able to see up from the strand below, there's room to stretch out. He hasn't unfurled his wings since the world didn't end on them, he'd rather forgotten how good it can feel. Just to be a little less contained, constrained...

  
      Not good enough to lead to helpless shivering and sighing, of course-- for that, he can thank Crowley.

  
      Crowley, who sits straddling Aziraphale's lower back, his weight solid and comfortable, his hands currently buried deep in Aziraphale's feathers.

  
     The wings move and work like any made of muscle and bone, but they aren't really-- they're just him. They're the very essence of him. To have Crowley's hands dug in, touching and ruffling and smoothing, it's...

  
      It's divine.

  
      Even if Crowley isn't.

  
      The feeling is one of the purest ecstasy, the sort of ecstasy Aziraphale visits on mortals, only decidedly more personal. Breathing is a long-held habit to keep people from getting nervous around him, rather than a necessity, but his breath quickens all the same over this. He moans.

  
      "Oh, that's right, angel, make some noise..." Crowley chuckles, with just the edge of a hiss. "Got you at my mercy now, haven't I?"

  
      Once upon a time, those words might have sounded much less loving... but Aziraphale finds it very difficult to imagine.

  
      He doesn't really experience anything he'd categorize as Lust, but... there are still little things Crowley inspires in him, and very little he would refuse if it were asked of him at this point. He is still capable of pleasure, a fact which is clearer and keener by the second, with Crowley’s insistent touch driving him out of his mind, as he folds in first one wing and then the other to let Crowley get all the way to the tips, before stretching out once more and feeling those hands working the place where they sprout from his back.

  
      Crowley’s lips are cool against the space between his shoulderblades, but the sudden darting touch of his tongue is hot, and he’d been smoothing everything back out only to suddenly rake his fingers up through Aziraphale’s feathers again, deep, and Aziraphale cries out with it.

  
      “Leave them out, leave them out…” He hisses against the back of Aziraphale’s neck. “I’m not done with you yet.”

  
      He folds them comfortably, to either side of Crowley, feels the way he shifts-- feels his trousers disappear completely.

  
      “Did you need me to manifest anything else?” He asks. He doesn’t need to, the wings are… more than enough intimacy and pleasure for him. But for Crowley…

  
      “Only if you want.” Another chuckle, best described as ‘smokey’. “Just lie how I put you, that’s enough…”

  
      Crowley’s trousers have gone the way of Aziraphale’s own, not that he’s surprised. Crowley’s weight against his back, cradled between the wings he still touches and touches. Crowley’s knees to the outside of his, urging him to keep his legs pressed more firmly together. Crowley’s mouth moving over his skin. Crowley’s cock, slick with the impatient use of magic to summon up something, sliding between his thighs.

  
      “Have I told you how much I like your thighs?” He hisses, as he thrusts between them. But he’s digging in right at the base of one wing and it feels as if he’s reaching into Aziraphale’s entire being, and the only answer he can give is a garbled sound of pleasure.

  
      Crowley hasn’t, in as many words, but he’s certainly made it plain. He’s always liked draping himself across Aziraphale’s lap. As a serpent, he’d particularly liked coiling himself around one-- had done once for the warmth of him and he’d been so pathetic and so strangely sweet that though they were hardly close then, Aziraphale had let him… And he’d certainly done a lot of groping in recent times. And a bit of biting. And, of course, there’s this…

  
      They are good thighs, for sitting on and squeezing and biting and-- Aziraphale supposes-- fucking. He wouldn’t have considered it, if Crowley didn’t enjoy doing all those things, but he’s rather happier with his vessel knowing it pleases, rather than merely doing the job and projecting the image. And the sex happens, but it’s not that Crowley is particularly lustful either-- curiously un-lustful, in fact, for a demon, but it happens with the two of them now and it’s nice, but it’s also nice knowing that his vessel pleases in quiet ways. In the way Crowley’s lean and sinuous body conforms to the curve of his belly sometimes as he soaks up the warmth of him, in the way Crowley will tug his hands to rest here or there for comfort, for company, and stroke at the back of one…

  
      “That’s it, that’s it…” A soft susurration against the back of one ear, repeated unto meaninglessness, Crowley’s hips stilling at last with a sigh, Aziraphale already beyond anything that could be likened to a mere orgasm…

  
      Crowley’s fingers are deft and gentle as he neatens everything he’s ruffled, in the aftermath, deft and gentle and shaky. He kisses the base of each wing, runs his nose along one, making Aziraphale mewl and shudder, whispering soft apologies.

  
      “There, angel…” He moves off of him, strokes his back one last time, avoiding the wings. Aziraphale’s entire essence is abuzz with him, past overwhelmed, but it’s not him alone. Crowley’s hands wouldn’t shake if it didn’t overwhelm him to to do it sometimes, to dive into what Aziraphale is and to feel the vibrations of him. To taste the divine. Aziraphale shall have to return the favor another day. “You’re beautiful.”

  
      He smiles. His vessel is decidedly not, which is how he likes it, really. But Crowley doesn’t mean his vessel.

  
      “So are you, my dear.” He manages, touching one cheek. Crowley’s vessel is a handsome one, but that isn’t what Aziraphale means, either.

  
      “Leave them a while?” Crowley reaches up, hand hovering near one wing. So close that Aziraphale shivers just at the nearness. “I’m the only one who’ll see.”

  
      Aziraphale plucks a single shed feather from the blanket. He runs it along Crowley’s lower lip and watches those golden eyes roll back in just a moment of ecstasy. He doesn’t shed often-- the feathers don’t stay corporeal when he does, not for long. He tucks it into Crowley’s pocket, jeans magicked back on again. For however long it lasts, it’s a trace bit of his essence, and when it fades into the ether, he thinks, let it be with Crowley. Let it give him something.

  
      He holds them in close to himself so that he can duck back into the cottage to put the kettle on. There’s half a cake in the kitchen, and he is feeling even more self-indulgent than usual after Crowley’s care. His reflection startles him on the way, the mirrored china hutch he passes, the sight of his wings…

  
      It isn’t that they’re out, it’s that they’re neat, as neat as Crowley’s, which is to say… Too neat. Preened into a perfection which is not quite angelic, and he can’t look at them. Of course the next time he manifests them, they shall be as ever, a bit ruffled-looking. Rather like the rest of him. Not shabby by any means, but without any thought to vanity.

  
      Crowley follows him into the kitchen, after gathering up the blanket and the bottle of wine, and the glasses, the little romantic spot they’d carved out for themselves for an afternoon’s indulgence. Misses the way he shudders a little at the sight of himself, and Aziraphale won’t mention. He enjoys the thoroughness of the attention too much… He presses himself to Aziraphale’s back where he stands at the sink filling the kettle, nose buried in his hair, arms about his belly, just barely in contact with still-sensitized wings, where it can’t be helped.

  
      “Clingy serpent.” He teases fondly. “You’re too much, do you know that?”

  
      “I’ve been told. Tea for two, is it? Any chance of my tempting you into a slice of cake?”

  
      “Oh, only if you’re having some.” He says airily. Which about translates to his having one and a half slices, Crowley likes to taste more than he likes to eat, but… it wouldn’t be tempting if it was just his own sensible portion, after all. And Crowley does so like to tempt…

  
      Somewhere, Aziraphale’s own virtues must balance it all out. He turns off the tap and feels a sigh stir his hair, feels something shift and move in the energy between them, a soft and loving thing.

  
      Ah. Perhaps that, then, is where the balance is struck.


	5. Clocked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People make a lot of assumptions about Aziraphale... but no mere human has ever seen through him quite like this.

    The discreet club Aziraphale has long attended has gone through several owners in the time he’s attended. It’s changed a good deal. That said, it’s not like other gay bars. It’s a nice, quiet little pub with a community focus, with a little corner ‘library’ of queer books, mostly of a helpful variety. With a gay men’s choir that tends to show up after rehearsals for drinks. It’s… pleasant. Relaxed. Old-fashioned.

 

    It’s genteel, the clientele a mix of older men who just want to have a glass of wine or a pint and a chat, and much younger ones who aren’t quite ready for the modern scene, and the odd quiet and bookish in-between. And women, now. It’s rather recent, it’s rather different, but there are women now.

 

    It’s a place which, through a combination of accidental and willful influence, suits Aziraphale perfectly.

 

    The fact that there is no longer a membership requirement, as there had been the first couple hundred years, means he no longer has to invent a series of nephews to turn into… He’d tried being unrelated, once or twice, but Crowley had made fun of him when he’d tried to claim ‘Ziraphale’ as a last name, so for the most part, he’s kept to being generations of Fells. And he’d discovered that if he disappeared a little while and came back as a nephew or a cousin once or twice removed, he didn’t have to work so hard to make people accept. Accept that he was familiar in looks and mannerisms, accept that he had inherited the bookshop…

 

    The current owner, Robert… Aziraphale had orchestrated his coming into possession of the place. It had seemed right, he’d been there since he was a young man and the place wasn’t just his home, he made it a home for others-- he made it safe for others. And having that sort of man at the helm meant Aziraphale didn’t have to work quite so hard. And that was the thing-- he isn’t allowed to work so hard. He isn’t allowed to pick favorites and lay his holy protection down on this one little group when he hasn’t been told, he isn’t allowed to make that kind of _choice_.

 

    He isn’t allowed to take care of them all, the way he might like. But they can always take care of each other.

 

    He’s glad they will do, glad Robert will do, because it was one thing to not be able to do all he’d like, and it’s another thing to… well, to _go_. It’s not that he’ll be that far in the grand scheme of things, and not that he won’t be back in London often enough, his shop will still be there and he imagines he’ll still open it every now and then… and that he shall come back for a drink after, with Crowley.

 

    _Crowley_ …

 

    “Hullo, dear.” He greets, moving to lean against the bar. It’s early yet, no one is in, except for Robert behind the bar and Susie straightening up a couple of tables-- and, Aziraphale expects, Robert’s young man in the back office. “I wanted to tell you I won’t be around much anymore. Anthony and I are whisking each other off… we’ve found a little cottage we like, South Downs, and I’ve… well, I’ve gone and promised him paradise.”

 

    He laughs nervously. Robert stares at him a hard moment. His eyes are clear and focused and a pale silvery-blue. Shrewd. The kind of eyes which remind Aziraphale, now and then, of some angels he has known. Eyes that seem to know more than they ought.

 

    He nods, looking down at the bar top. “I think I expected you to go away soon… in the back of my mind.”

 

    “Yes, well-- I’ll come back to town now and then, I’m sure. To look in on the shop and to come and have a drink…”

 

    “And someday you’ll leave the shop to your nephew. One who’s a lot like you. And he’ll come in and buy a glass of wine now and then from the Associate, who shall say he looks so like his uncle. As you look so like yours.”

 

    He doesn’t level it as an accusation. He speaks the words very softly, and he sounds certain, and he sounds as if he is afraid to be so certain.

 

    “Not this time.” Aziraphale says, which is admission enough in and of itself. “I intend to spend most of my time with my Anthony. All the time we’re given.”

 

    “I want to show you something, in the back office.”

 

    He nods, following Robert back. His young man is, indeed, there, typing away at the computer. He looks up when the door clicks open.

 

    “Associate.” Robert greets, in a fond rumble. “May we take the office a moment?”

 

    “Your office.” He smiles, rising from the desk and grabbing a slim box from an open drawer. “I’ll tend bar, shall I? Please don’t touch the taxes without me. Mr. Fell, I’ll be sure to have your wine breathing for you.”

 

    “Have I ever touched the taxes without you? And yet you live in terror of my suddenly doing so.” He pinches a cheek and rolls his eyes, and then they’re alone and Robert is holding the box, intense fondness fading into a serious look.

 

    “He’s a lamb. What can I do for you?”

 

    “You’ve done enough. Enough I expect that’s why I knew this was coming… how much more could you do for me? The Associate found this, in a box in the attic, with a bunch of old records and furniture and things…”

 

    He opens the box, and there… a group photograph, taken in 1842, he hadn’t thought about it, about the repercussions, it had seemed a silly fad, it had seemed harmless. Not like Crowley, who tempted fate by trying to get himself _painted_ , the century before. Crowley was sleeping, and so Aziraphale had relied more than usual upon the club to keep from feeling lonely, and when someone had wanted to take the picture…

 

    “It says Ezra Fell on the back. Along with the other names. The Associate thought you’d be delighted to find you’d had an ancestor here, with your name and all, but…” Robert takes a deep breath. “Look. I don’t believe in a bunch of silly nonsense. I’ve got too many scars, and too many calluses from digging too many graves, for that. But we’ve known each other a very long time, haven’t we?”

 

    “We have.” He agrees mildly.

 

    “We didn’t meet when you took over your uncle’s bookshop.”

 

    “No, we didn’t.”

 

    “You carried me here. I was still a boy, I was seventeen. They roughed me up outside a more exciting bar than this one and they left me in an alley and I thought I was going to die. You carried me here, and old Nick owned the place then, he called for an ambulance… Funny thing, I was covered in blood, but when the ambulance came they said it was barely a scratch, and I knew it wasn-- I knew I was… _hurt_ , badly, before you found me. Abraham Zephaniah Fell, heaven’s sake, you had a worse middle name than I do. I didn’t tell you a thing about my family, but you put in a call to the only one of the lot who would come pick me up and look after me.”

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “You introduced me to people. You were the reason I had a job and a home and my _life_ after that night. It’s funny, I was so ready to be angry. No. I am angry. I’m angry every damn day of my life-- can I say ‘damn’?”

 

    “Yes, if you like.”

 

    “I’m angry. I was so ready to be _bitter_ , though, and I am not that. And some days, I’m only angry two or three minutes. We were all angry and by God we _did_ something with it-- can I say--?”

 

    “You may.” He fights a smile. It doesn’t seem the appropriate time.

 

    “Well, by _God_ , we did something with our anger. And I built myself a home. And I know I’m a lucky man, because I’ve given enough people reason to take a swing at me in the years since I’ve been seventeen, I suppose, and I’ve taken a few punches, but no one with a weapon’s ever hit me. You told me I would be all right and ever since that night I have been. And I’ve had fathers and brothers and sisters and, and big grown kids who treat me like their own old man, because of this place. And I have the Associate-- and I’ve not forgotten who encouraged me to take him out.”

 

    “He’s good for you. And you for him.”

 

    “And when your ‘uncle’ went away-- oh, it was a sad day, that, and I realized I didn’t even have a photo of you. I had a personal note you’d written me and the copy of Maurice you’d given me once, and… the fading memories of just how your voice had sounded, or the exact way you looked, though I remembered all the things you’d said to me, and those little… little ways you had of doing things. And when you began coming by, I thought… You’re so like him. And I pushed down the question, because it was a ridiculous question. Because you’re my age-- because you seem my age!-- but I would have guessed you were fifty when I was seventeen, and you didn’t look much older by the time I was thirty-one and you left…”

 

    “You seem to have it all figured out. I understand if you would like to tell your young man the truth…”

 

    “Oh, no. I don’t need him thinking I’ve gone mad. I’ve spent most my life not believing in God and now I’ve got a guardian angel? Ridiculous thing for a grown man to believe. Even after a miracle or two. But he doesn’t need to know… I don’t think it changes things with him if I keep this one secret. I don’t expect him to tell me every difficult to explain thing there is, either… Every man’s got something he can’t ask his husband to understand. As long as it’s not to do with us, I don’t think it does any harm.”

 

    “I don’t suppose it does. Although… I think it is more appropriate to say I’m the _place’s_ guardian angel-- I mean, I’m not, that’s not a thing, exactly, but I have… acted in that capacity. Indeed, dear, I saw you get this bar for everyone else’s sake as much as your own. You take care of them. In the coming years, I won’t be needed here the way I have been in the past…”

 

    “I do have a question.”

 

    “I’ll do my best to answer it.”

 

    “What is Anthony?”

 

    “Ah.” Aziraphale sucks in a breath he doesn’t need.

 

    “It’s not… it’s not right if he’s just a person. Even if he knows…”

 

    “He is not human, no. He’s been by my side, more or less, since the earth began. Since Eden.”

 

    Robert lets out a low whistle. “By your side since Eden, and I had to talk you through first date jitters… You’re a slow mover, Ezra. Is it Ezra, or is it Abraham?”

 

    “Ezra will do. And… there are complications I would rather not go into. Suffice to say… my time with him is precious to me as your time with your husband is to you.”

 

    “It’s different. I’ve got maybe twenty years left. Maybe thirty, if I’m lucky. Not like to be forty. Even without an untimely accident, not like to be forty… I mean I could be hit by a bus tomorrow, but--”

 

    “You won’t be.”

 

    “Right. Well, maybe thanks to you I’ll get forty and I’ll get them with him. But we will both die someday. You won’t.”

 

    “No. The Earth will. Someday… when even this place won’t be standing any longer, then… It is very likely that we shall be recalled to other posts before the sun swallows its planets. I know it must sound… unfair, to you, that I should look at a span of so many potential years, and think it isn’t enough, it’s just… The life cycle of the Earth is a drop in the bucket next to eternity. You shall have the rest of your life with your young man, and when the end comes, a day will come when you find yourselves reunited in the next world. But Anthony and I… we will not have that. When this world is gone, we shall be sent to very different places. I shall--” He blinks back sudden tears. “I shall spend the rest of eternity without him, I’m afraid. All we have is this world. There is no place else for us to be together. Angels aren’t meant to have love affairs.”

 

    “Millions of years before the sun’s set to swallow the earth. By then, mankind will probably have another planet. If you’re both assigned to look out for humans. There’s no reason to think you won’t keep doing it, wherever we build ships to take us.”

 

    “Oh, do you think? That would be nice. For everyone.”

 

    “Our next planet’s going to need a nice little safe place for our kind, too. You’ll be there. With your man.”

 

    “I hope you’re right. When did you become an optimist, dear?”

 

    “I developed a secret inclination towards it, when I was seventeen.”

 

    “I’ll come and see you.” Aziraphale promises, taking and squeezing Robert’s hand. “To visit the bar now and then, for the next forty years… but-- after that. I’ll be here. It won’t be frightening and it won’t hurt. I’ll be here when it is time. And then… the two of you get eternity. The same as everyone else.”

 

    “I think I’ll appreciate that.”

 

    “If you ever do need me… I’ll know. And I’ll come. But you won’t. You’re going to be all right.”

 

    “All right. Well, look… come have one on the house now before you go. And you keep the photograph. But-- only if you let us take one of you here and now.”

 

    “You have yourself a deal.” He agrees. If nothing else, Crowley will get a laugh out of it… He’d slept through the fashions of 1842, hadn’t he? He’d seen the clothing pieces in Aziraphale’s wardrobe, not too much change there by the time he woke, but he certainly hadn’t seen that bloody hairstyle he’d had in the 1840s…

 

    They’d have to come back and visit. It won’t be hard to come back and visit.


	6. Portland Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the fandomweekly 'overindulgence' challenge.
> 
> And I'm sorry gdocs does not allow me to do proper footnotes, footnotes are all down in the notes box at the end.

    Crowley has poured himself into Aziraphale’s back booth several hours prior[1]. At the Ritz, there is a certain amount of decorum expected. In a discreet establishment which has existed several centuries at Portland Place, the standard of decorum is very different. He’s free to press close-- closer than Aziraphale would have thought he’d wish to-- with his arm across the back of the booth, with one leg all but crossed over Aziraphale’s lap.

 

    It isn’t the closeness, really. Once upon a time, Crowley used to insist it was demonic activity if he sprawled out in Aziraphale’s lap and prevented his moving, but those were the days when men sprawled out on each other if they liked, and no one assigned much meaning to it. People _touched_ back then. Somehow he just hadn’t thought Crowley missed touching _him_ so much.

 

    He’d intended to nurse a nice glass of wine a while and enjoy the atmosphere, perhaps take an opportunity to do some good-- to listen to some heartbroken boy’s troubles and assure him it would look better in the morning, to point a pair of star-crossed lovers towards each other, to summon up a taxicab for one who’d had a few too many… little everyday things. But then Crowley had appeared and insisted upon pouring a highly indulgent red down his throat[2]...

 

    “I have… always, you know, I’ve always, I think.” Aziraphale says. He feels very pleasantly drunk and is not inclined to sober himself just to get a point across.

 

    “Oh, yes.” Crowley brings the glass to Aziraphale’s lips again. Aziraphale thinks they’ve been drinking out of the same one[3]. “Yes, absolutely.”

 

    “I mean, you know?”

 

    “Yes. Well. Not at all.” Crowley takes a sip of his own. He knows they’ve been drinking out of the same one[4], and he’s rather hoped Aziraphale hasn’t noticed.

 

    “ _You_ , dear.”

 

    “Oh.” He smiles. He sets the glass aside so that he can take Aziraphale’s hand. “My favorite subject.”

 

    Aziraphale’s hands are elegant by design, by careful maintenance. Crowley’s just seem to have wound up that way. Strong but never rough, squared palms, long fingers. They are very nice hands. He idly wonders where else they might fit very nicely.

 

    “Vanity.” He tuts. “You wicked boy.”

 

    “Call me wicked again.” Crowley says, his chest pressing against Aziraphale’s shoulder, his nose bare millimeters from Aziraphale’s cheek. He freezes, leaning back. “I... could sober up some.”

 

    “Kiss me first. While we’re on even, even… while it’s fair. In case we won’t be brave enough when we’re sober.” Aziraphale demands, grabbing at him.

 

    “Aziraphale…?”

 

    “It would be very wicked of you?”

 

    As sexy talk goes, it isn’t. Mercifully, for beings of angelic stock, sex appeal matters very little in the grand scheme of things. Willingness and intent matter quite a bit more. Crowley is very willing, and Aziraphale has clear intent.

 

    “Say it again.” Crowley entreats, words smearing against Aziraphale’s lips. “Oh, say it again…”

 

    “Wicked.” He chuckles, wrapping an arm around him. “You _beastly_ thing, coming here to get me imbib-- inhibi-- _un_ inhibibed… Drunk, and highly susceptible to your wiles.”

 

    “Are you now?”

 

    “ _Highly_.” Aziraphale promises[5].

 

    “Back to mine?”

 

    “In a bit, dear.” He draws him back into another kiss. After all… to discuss the things that need discussing, they shall have to be sober, and it feels so pleasant to be drunk right now, on more than just the wine. And to be kissing in the back booth of a discreet establishment, where they might be glimpsed and that would be just fine.

 

    Anything at all might be just fine, tonight. And if it isn’t, they’ve an eternity to figure it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Aziraphale’s booth has been his since the booths were first put in, in 1910, but he has had a customary place for some four hundred and fifty years.  
> [2] Literally, his hand careful as he tilted the glass to Aziraphale’s lips.  
> [3] They have.  
> [4] Rather, they’ve both been drinking out of both glasses, with very little regard for which had begun the night with whom.  
> [5] In fact, he hasn’t given a single thought to any more than being kissed, and to having Crowley’s hands on him in a general way.


	7. Grooming Circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not prompted, I just wanted to write this what-if Before scenario thanks to a couple of lines from Same Three Chords...
> 
> So here's pre-Sauntering Vaguely Downward Crowley, Aziraphale, and Accidental Public Sex, and a thing that Never Happened in the context of that fic, but I had the thought and so here we are.
> 
> (whatever you do, don't think about how potentially sad the Sauntering to follow is in the context of a pre-existing romantic partnership, I guess)

Technically, he shouldn't even be here. He's maybe kind of sort of intruding. But he'd seen a group approach Aziraphale, and...

 

And he gets weird about Aziraphale, he knows he gets weird about Aziraphale. Because sometimes, he sees him talking with the others in his own sphere and he can't stand to be around and he can't stand to share his attention with others who aren't nearly interested enough in him. He can't stand to see him try and be someone he's not in front of the others. He can't stand... he hardly knows, but he knows he can't stand it.

 

This time, though, he overhears something about a grooming session, and so he jogs over to ask if there's room for one more, and the answer is always yes-- he doesn't know why he's so nervous, it would be rude to say no when it's a group that hasn't started, and it would be especially rude for one of the archangels to tell off someone from the second sphere. He wouldn't normally lean on credentials in a social situation, it seems crass, but he's also determined to get next to Aziraphale and he's got no moral compunctions with doing so. He wouldn't be the first angel to throw his weight around a little on something inconsequential, if he had done.

 

Not that he needs to, because they just say of course he's welcome, and no one thinks anything of it when he slides between Aziraphale and Gabriel-- no one, except Aziraphale, who gives him a smile which is a little relieved and a little shy and a little pleased. He doesn't pay attention to how anyone else is spaced out, it doesn't matter.

 

The only thing in all Creation that matters is that he's got a perfectly good excuse to _bury_ his hands in Aziraphale's wings. He's not actually sure if he thinks they're beautiful because of any physical quality they have, or if he thinks they're beautiful because they are Aziraphale's. He thinks maybe it's both. When they move and the light plays over them, the colors... And they're graceful, the way he holds them, and they look _soft_.

 

He barely registers the hands grooming his own wings, focused as he is on Aziraphale. They are soft, and _warm_ , so much warmer than just any feathers are warm. He's _fluffy_ , right there at the base, and up at the joint, thick and cozy and fluffy and sweet, he's _sweet_ , and everything about him is...

 

Everything about Aziraphale envelopes him, sudden and strong. It's a rush, like diving down into the most delicious set of sensations and finding a piece of yourself you didn't know was missing. It's safe-- which is a funny thing to think, as he's never been _un_ safe. No one has. He's never even had a word for the concept until the moment he realized it was possible to feel safer than usual. But he feels as if he's inside Aziraphale and nothing can touch him, he's in a place with no self-doubt and no questions and no fears. In a place where the only thing that exists is Aziraphale, and this was just supposed to be a grooming, but he finds himself massaging deep at the wings before him, feeling the power and strength beneath the cozy, fluffy exterior, and if that isn't Aziraphale all over, somehow. Deep in him there's steel and fire he's never been tasked with finding. He hopes that if the day ever comes when Aziraphale needs to find it, he'll be there to see, because he's sure it would be a sight.

 

Although he can't think what that occasion would be. There's not much call to test one's mettle in Heaven.

 

He sinks deep into Aziraphale, so deep that he doesn't even feel himself being touched anymore, he only feels this. Only feels the warmth of Aziraphale's deepest being and the wings beneath his own hands, and all is so, so right that the ordinary Rightness looks dull and ugly by comparison, and then

 

Aziraphale

 

 _Moans_.

 

The sound ignites him, it makes him new, it wakes things in him he never dreamt existed. Things he has no name for.

 

He's sure no angel yet has made the sound that tears its way out of his throat in answer. But they are one thing now, they are _one_ and nothing else matters, nothing else could ever matter. Hands are not enough-- he presses his face into the soft surface of one wing, he rubs his cheek against it and then straightens the feathers with his nose, and then he presses his lips there, softly puckers them and travels along as far as he can reach, going up higher on his knees to be able to keep doing this, to keep feeling the thrill that travels in a circuit between them, to keep hearing the way Aziraphale _keens_ for him in pleasure.

 

Pleasure.

 

He's never known pleasure before, not as a physical force like this. Flying sometimes, he supposes, is pleasurable, and conversation can be, and there have been games of a sort, but there has never in all his experience been something like this, sweet and sharp and shared. There has never been something which made him feel as if he suddenly knew his purpose and it wasn't just keeping the universe in order and seeing All Good Things go to plan, it wasn't just praise and glory and all that is Just and Right, it's this. It's this highly personal pleasure he now takes in Aziraphale, that quickens every part of his very being. If he wasn't made for this, then there's been an error somewhere, and to his knowledge, there has never, ever been an error.

 

The way Aziraphale says his name is holy in a brand new way. It brings to him a brand new love of all of Creation.

 

" _Aziraphale_..." He answers, and he hides his burning face in that perfect wing, and this time he licks it and he doesn't know why. Aziraphale is reaching back now, for him, hands grabbing at his knees, seeking out his thighs, the circle forgotten... No one else touches him, either, he doesn't think. It's a world for the two of them alone.

 

" _Yes..._ "

 

"You were made for me." He growls, burying the words in Aziraphale's feathers. "I was made for you. This-- this-- _this_ , it's Right..."

 

" _Yes_!"

 

And then, suddenly, he doesn't exist. He doesn't exist at all, nor Aziraphale, only the both of them. Only a brand new thing that is their combined essence. When the moment passes and he finds himself his own being again, all he wants is to do it again, and yet he thinks if he did, he might never come back to himself. His hands come away from Aziraphale's wings, shaking.

 

"Oh... oh my." Aziraphale says. He twists around so that their eyes might meet, and he is _aglow_ , he is more perfect than he has ever been. He is pleasure and he is light. "I've never... had _that_ happen. Have you?"

 

"No."

 

"So that just happened." Gabriel says, from behind him. Someone else coughs, awkward.

 

For the first time, he realizes that the circle has separated entirely but not disbanded, that the others are sitting around staring.

 

"I didn't know an experience could feel like that." Aziraphale bites his lip.

 

"No, nor I. Something, wasn't it?"

 

Another, rather more pointed cough, from somewhere around the circle.

 

"I should get yours." Aziraphale adds.

 

" _Oh, yes_."

 

"Somewhere private." Raphael says, very pointedly indeed. "You might prefer."

 

"Erm. Yes. Somewhere private." He rises and offers his hand to Aziraphale. "Shall we?"

 

The others still stare, as they head off together. But let them, he thinks. If they knew what he knows now, they wouldn't blame him for it.


	8. Wrapped Up in Books

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another run at Crowley waking up after 1900, for no challenge whatsoever.

    Aziraphale is miserable, and that means Crowley is miserable.

 

    Well, it’s not his fault! Sometimes you fancy a nap, and he thinks Aziraphale’s being very unfair about it, giving him the cold shoulder like he is. He’s adapted, made sure his clothes looked like everyone else’s-- only better-- and listened carefully to strangers talking out in public to get a handle on the modern slang… it’s just…

 

    What he really wants is to understand what’s happened while he’s been sleeping. Not every little thing that’s happened in the world, but some things.

 

    The things Aziraphale is so upset about, which he can’t just ask him about. How would that look, him asking Aziraphale all about what’s the matter? As if they’re…

 

    Friends.

 

    They could have been friends by now, except… every time he thinks maybe Aziraphale trusts him, he goes and bollockses it up somehow. He crosses a line he didn’t know was a line-- all right, sometimes one he does know-- or he disappears for eighty odd years without a word, or… Well, mostly those two things. He doesn’t mean to cross those lines. They both do it a little now and then, he thinks, but it’s a bit different when it’s Aziraphale. Aziraphale’s the angel, the rules… they’re not the same and he can’t expect them to be. He doesn’t expect them to be, because he’s _been_ an angel. There are things he finds easy to forgive because he understands what it might be like to be in Aziraphale’s shoes and to have to make a difficult call. When the Arrangement was new, they stepped on each other’s toes as much as they had before they ever agreed to not get in each others’ way.

 

    Aziraphale irritates him now and then, but Aziraphale’s never hurt him to the point he thinks he has done, the times he’s been thoughtless. When Aziraphale is thoughtless, it’s only ever because he’s distracted with something else, or…

 

    Well, all right, every so often it hurts, that he thinks Crowley’s got no real emotions left since becoming a demon, but it’s not like Crowley advertises that he has. If he told him so, he thinks Aziraphale would apologize, even. So he can’t be angry about that even when it stings to hear, he’s never corrected it. But Aziraphale has said, when Crowley’s thoughtless. He’s said he doesn’t like it and he’s said it’s callous of him. And he looks so betrayed sometimes… when Crowley’s work verges on cruel, the look Aziraphale gives him makes him feel small, makes him feel no better than the worst of them, and he’s a demon and he likes his work, but there was a time he didn’t think ahead. And Aziraphale doesn’t hold the job against him any more than he does Aziraphale-- sometimes he thinks Aziraphale does even less-- but he doesn’t like Crowley taking a thing too far.

 

    He thinks ahead now. He thinks it’s made him a better demon. His keener sense of consequence makes him an innovator, in the art of spreading malice too slight to trace, too insidiously small to stamp out. Hell doesn’t understand, they never do, but it’s better, the tactics he’s adopted since the Arrangement. Better than burning one man’s life down and hoping he might take a few others down in the flames. Now it’s all about who he can singe by degrees.

 

    More than when Crowley has been a bit too cruel to a human, though, is the betrayal when he shows up after an unexplained absence of considerable length, when he acts as though it’s nothing at all to vanish without a goodbye for a hundred years or so and to stroll through the door with a breezy smile on his face.

 

    It’s not like they haven’t spent longer apart, much longer. And this last time he left a note, but the note had just said ‘napping- cover for me’, and…

 

    All right, eighty odd years is a long nap to ask Aziraphale to cover for him for…

 

    And Aziraphale’s upset about things which have nothing to do with Crowley, but he’d only snapped that he wouldn’t expect Crowley to understand at all, and thrown him out on his ear.

 

    He’s in a gentleman’s club, posing as a bit of a bounder who’d just returned home after six years abroad, and no one questions his presence, or at least not twice, so he’s able to fall in with a few gossiping young men, to ask what he’s missed. He can’t ask to be caught up on eighty years, but he can ask to be caught up on six.

 

    He mostly just lets them talk about what they like, and when asked about himself and his voyage overseas-- he picks Australia, because he thinks it’s about as good as living under a rock-- he implies ruined women left his wake, some married, a father despairing of his ever behaving and sending him away, more trouble down under, and then his return.

 

    When they don’t bring Oscar Wilde up, he asks.

 

    “What about him?” One of the young men asks.

 

    “I don’t know. My friend mentioned him, when I got back, I guess he’s a poet or something. But then I asked and he didn’t have anything more to say, couldn’t tell me if his work was good or bad or anything.”

 

    If they’re aware the man has recently died, they don’t bring that part up. One at least is under the impression that he’d also fled the country.

 

    “Not because of girl troubles.” He adds with a little chuckle.

 

    “Is your friend that sort?” Another asks.

 

    “What sort? A poet?”

 

    Three out of four of them laugh at that. The fourth calls for a waiter to bring more drinks.

 

    “The unspeakable sort.” And this is the one who seems to be their ringleader.

 

    “He’s pretty unspeakable, if you mean how he dresses.” Crowley jokes, as if he really knows. But he’s dressed like these young men now, himself, that’s what matters. He’s only been awake half the week and already he can tell Aziraphale’s let his wardrobe get painfully out of date.

 

    “Teddy means Greek love.” The fourth young man rolls his eyes.

 

    Crowley casts back to the time he’d spent in Greece, but it doesn’t help him. His expression must show it, even with his eyes hidden from view.

 

    “The sort of thing that’s fine at boarding school but not anywhere else.” Teddy says.

 

    Crowley has never been to boarding school, or indeed school at all, but he nods as if he understands. “Oh, sure. Who didn’t get up to unspeakable things at school?”

 

    When they actually explain the trial, Crowley catches on quick to what sort of things go on at boarding school.

 

    Come to think of it, he does remember that sort of thing going on here and there in Greece.

 

    “My friend’s a religious celibate.” He says, once he has the whole story-- insomuch as four drunk youths of wealth and ease are able to give any story that doesn’t involve themselves. It’s not quite a lie.

 

    “Doesn’t mean you can’t be an invert.” The fourth and drunkest boy shrugs, finding his glass empty again despite how recently he’d summoned a new drink. “I knew one once, you know. He became a priest just so no one would wonder why he didn’t marry. Anyone can be a religious celibate.”

 

    “Well, my friend’s not interested in anything. I mean, it’s preposterous, right? Because if he were, I’d think-- if he _were_ , he’d be interested in me! And it couldn’t happen, of course, but I’d think if he were, he’d at least want to try it on with me. I mean… look at me!”

 

    The drunk boy giggles and shakes his head.

 

    “Call me vain if you like, but I’ve a proven track record, lots of people think I’m very handsome. Women and artists and all sorts. So if he were interested in having it on with a man, he’d have asked _me_. I’ve broken the law loads of times and he’s covered for me, so he could ask me and know I’d never say a word about it to anyone else! The fact he hasn’t means he can’t be.”

 

    “Maybe he’s just started in the last six years.”

 

    “Preposterous.” Crowley repeats. There’s no real way of explaining that Aziraphale isn’t a sexual being, and that for that matter, neither is he. He likes being handsome, and he likes being admired, if not pursued. But he likes it for his own self, not because he cares so much what others think of him. He doesn’t want people being sexually attracted to him, and Aziraphale should be no exception, but the very idea…

 

    The very idea that Aziraphale would be attracted to someone else is ridiculous. If either of them was going to experience something of the kind, they’d be… it would be for each other. There’s no one else! Not anyone who would count. Not anyone who would understand. When he’s tried to imagine sex with other parties, mortal parties, Crowley’s always found it distressing. The couple of times he’d considered it with another demon have been distressing as well. And certainly he wouldn’t try it on with any other angels. When he thinks of Aziraphale it is strange and he feels awkward, he doesn’t really want it, but there’s no revulsion at the thought… it’s just… why ruin a good thing?

 

    Of course, ruining a good thing is basically what he’s best at, and ruining the possibility of a good thing with Aziraphale is practically a hobby at this point. Just not… not like that.

 

    They move onto other topics, about sports and the state of opera these days, and where a man newly returned to England’s shores might find the softer company he pretends he craves. They’ve all got animal sorts of names, Teddy’s friends, Robin and Badger and Bunny. Robin he supposes might be a real name, but he doesn’t think Badger and Bunny are. He thinks Badger badgers and Bunny… bunnys. Rabbits? He must do something rabbity to be called Bunny, surely his mother didn’t christen him so.

 

    He searches a couple of other bookstores in hopes of finding something by Wilde, to try and figure out what Aziraphale had cared so much about with this one, but he has no luck, and it feels weird to be in a bookstore that isn’t Aziraphale’s.

 

    He doesn’t _want_ to ask Aziraphale, because then he’ll have to admit that he cares about the things Aziraphale cares about, and he doesn’t want to do that when Aziraphale is mad at him. He’s just going to sulk, isn’t he? He’s just going to ask what Crowley’s playing at, and misinterpret everything, and act like they’re not something that’s almost friends.

 

    In the end, he doesn’t have to ask Aziraphale. The next time he goes to the club to indulge in a glass of wine and encourage some poor decisions-- easy hunting grounds, but he’s a bit rusty with sleep after all-- a boy who is either Robin or Bunny slips him a book. Whichever one had done more drinking.

 

    “I dug up the copy we all passed around back when it was new.” He says, and Crowley does not peel back the paper it’s wrapped in. “We’d heard it was an immoral book so we thought we’d read it together.”

 

    “Is it?” Crowley asks, with a sharp grin.

 

    “I don’t know. There is a girl in it, though. I mean… so the people who say it’s indecent and they’ve never read it only they saw all about the trial, you know… There’s a girl in it.”

 

    He knows about seven things he could tempt the boy into, some of which could earn him a trial of his own. He doesn’t push him towards any of them.

 

    He’s too pleasant a drunk for pushing him that way to be any fun or any use, and as for the rest… Poor thank you that’d be. Instead, he urges a pair of truly disgusting young men to an outrageous act of theft. Probably rich enough to get away with it.

 

    And he takes the book, and he heads for home.

 

    The book is disappointingly moral, in his expert opinion. All the bad deeds are punished in the end, and quite a lot about the nature of sin and society. He can see why Aziraphale likes it.

 

    “Someone gave me a book to read.” He announces, when he saunters into Aziraphale’s shop to find it devoid of customers. Just the way the angel likes it…

 

    “And yet you’re here among all of mine?”

 

    “Well I finished it, didn’t I?” He leans on the counter. “I only wanted to read it because I’d heard it was shockingly immoral, and do you know it was the most disgustingly moral thing I think I’ve ever read? All about how a life of sin will lead to ruin all around. Enough to put people off the pursuit of mindless hedonism! Bah, shouldn’t be surprised some people just don’t understand how novels work. They never have. The most blameless pap used to get called immoral just for being a made-up story, you remember?”

 

    “I remember being the one to complain to you about that very fact.” Aziraphale sniffs. “What do you want, Crowley?”

 

    Well. ‘Crowley’’s a step up from ‘demon’, anyway, at least the icy way he’d said it when he first showed up post-nap… It’s his name, he can’t complain about his name. It’s not the fond familiarity of ‘my dear boy’, which he has yet to hear since he’d gone to bed for more than eighty years.

 

    “I just thought I’d leave the book with you. Being as I’m not about to keep something with a wholesome moral on my own shelf.” He slides it onto the counter.

 

    “My copy is signed to me.” Aziraphale says, after a brief glance down to the cover.

 

    “So sell it second-hand, I don’t care what you do with it, you’re the one with the bookshop.”

 

    He snorts. “I won’t have an easy time doing that. The court of law may pass a two year sentence, the court of public opinion…”

 

    “I suppose you don’t want this, either.” Crowley produces a small paper bag from the bakery up the street. It had been warm when he’d bought it. In the two hours he’d spent dithering over visiting Aziraphale at all, it had become less so. He’s a bit worried to try heating it back up with his powers, lest the paper bag catch fire.

 

    “What is it?”

 

    “Apple turnover.”

 

    Something in Aziraphale’s posture softens, and then a moment later, his expression.

 

    “Of course if you really want me to take the book off your hands, I will.” He says. “I do have a certain stock of… books which respectable booksellers do not sell.”

 

    “You do?”

 

    “Not filth! But… the unfairly judged.” He nods.

 

    “Oh, go on.” Crowley pulls the pastry from the bag, that he might safely warm it up just a little before handing it over. “I know you don’t love me, you only want what I have for you.”

 

    “Don’t be silly, my dear.” Aziraphale shakes his head, and he smiles.


	9. Too Much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, there is an irresistible urge to take Aziraphale apart.
> 
> Sometimes, Aziraphale is very pleased with Crowley's urges.

    “You’ve been after me all day.” Aziraphale accuses playfully. He’s lost track of the number of times Crowley’s grabbed at his arse throughout the day, and it’s been a lovely day…

 

    Crowley had been plastered to him at breakfast, had been pestering him with love taps and gropes and squeezes when he’d prepared that breakfast and then had slithered into his lap to feed it to him. Aziraphale had spent the morning in his library, pulling volumes in need of repair, a job he would take them back to his shop for, where he had a workspace upstairs. He’d boxed them up very carefully, and then shifted other books onto the shelves to take up the space, and all the while Crowley had followed him on his task, handsy and impish.

 

    Lunch hadn’t been much, hadn’t needed to be. Barely more than a cup of tea, an excuse to sit down together a while, but Crowley had snuggled right up to him for it, and then after he’d dragged him out into the garden and actually got him working for once. Normally, he’d read and watch Crowley go about his task, but it had been… it had been fun, being involved. A break from routine, and of course he couldn’t bend over a plot or a planter without Crowley pressing right up against him, grabbing at him, squeezing…

 

    They’d had a pleasant rest just to enjoy the garden in the late afternoon, where he’d expected overtures to be made in earnest, but instead Crowley had simply been very cuddly. Oh, he’d grabbed at him a bit, yes, but the intent wasn’t to start something. But then they’d fixed dinner together and fed each other dinner, and cleaned up after dinner, and here they are, and it just seems…

 

    “I’m always after you.” Crowley grins, hands settling firmly on Aziraphale’s hips as he presses close. “I’ve got plans for you tonight, love…”

 

    He rocks his hips forward into Aziraphale’s backside, kneading at his love handles, nuzzling at the back of his neck, until he feels him give in, feels the way he _melts_.

 

    “Far be it from me to interfere with your plans, then.” He sighs, his hands covering Crowley’s.

 

    “Come to bed.” A whisper, hot against the back of Aziraphale’s neck, accompanied by a quick flick of forked tongue. “And don’t deny me anything tonight…”

 

    “Do I ever?”

 

    “Not often.” He chuckles, separating from Aziraphale only to give him a little pat. “Bed.”

 

    The ‘now’ is implied. He feels a delicious, shivery tension at the fact that it is.

 

    Crowley follows him up the stairs, _slinks_ up them, gaze burning into Aziraphale’s each time he looks back to be sure he’s close behind. They reach the bedroom, and Crowley sheds his clothes, sinuous and sensual, steps forward to strip Aziraphale as well.

 

    “ _Beautiful_ …” He murmurs, his hand sliding from the side of Aziraphale’s throat, down to caress his chest. Soft swells of fat over the sturdy muscle… cozy, for resting his head again, and strong when he’s longed to be supported, protected. Sexy, too, yielding to kneading hands, not to mention the bites he’s often left. The fluff of silky hair at the center, the sensitive nipples just waiting to be teased… He brushes a thumb over one, grinning at the way Aziraphale shivers. “I want you, angel… I want all of you.”

 

    “It’s yours.” Aziraphale promises, his arms coming up around Crowley. “I’m yours.”

 

    “You are mine, all mine, aren’t you?” He lets his hands follow the slope of Aziraphale’s belly, before sweeping out to his sides, to grab for his hips again. Squeezing, pulling him close. “Do you know what I want out of you tonight? I want you to offer yourself to me…”

 

    “Consider me offered.” He nods, breathless.

 

    “I want you to sit on my face.” Crowley growls against his throat, hands moving back up to Aziraphale’s chest.

 

    “That sounds uncomfortable for you, if not dangerous…”

 

    “Well-- I mean, no, you don’t-- you wouldn’t really be _sitting_ on me, it’s not like when I have you in my _lap_.” He stops. “It’s-- you know. You’d just… you’ll kneel over me, so I can, er… You don’t know about this one?”

 

    They’ve both been around humans long enough that they know a lot of the things two people with human-shaped bodies can do together. Without really seeking the knowledge out, they’d both wound up with plenty of it. Somehow Crowley had assumed, once he’d discovered what Aziraphale _did_ know about sex, that they knew all the same things.

 

    “I kneel over you-- over your face? Is this just an oral sex position?” Aziraphale asks, warming back up to the notion.

 

    “Well, sort of. Only, you know… so I can eat you out?”

 

    Aziraphale’s brow furrows as he turns that over with everything he knows about sex.

 

    “It sounds like I would have to make an effort in an entirely different direction. Is that-- is that something you’d _want_? Because we can discuss it, dear, if it is, but I-- That is--”

 

    “What? No-- no! I mean, I’ll experiment with anything you like, but no. I mean, you know. Your arse?”

 

    Aziraphale goes bright red. “Your tongue in my-- you’d be-- licking? Around the, er, general area, or…?”

 

    “Around, inside. Yeah.”

 

    “Oh, Crowley, that’s _filthy_.”

 

    “I know. Of course, you’ve only had an arsehole on two occasions and I know you’ve never once done anything _filthy_ either of those times. There’s absolutely no reason why I couldn’t spend _hours_ tonguing you.”

 

    Aziraphale’s knees weaken, as does his resolve. Crowley does have a very good point, he’s never once… There’s no real reason to say no. And he’d _enjoyed_ having Crowley finger him, and tease him. He’d enjoyed having Crowley penetrate him, the couple of times they’d done it that way. And Crowley’s tongue… it’s a very clever tongue. He loves the things it does to him when they kiss, loves the way it pleases when they make love-- even when Crowley isn’t going down on him, his tongue is tickling and teasing… tasting his throat, flicking out over a nipple, caressing him, hot and wet and dextrous…

 

    He can hardly imagine the pleasure it would bring him, if he said yes to this.

 

    He doesn’t have to imagine.

 

    “Well… you want to?” He whispers, clinging even tighter to Crowley, as Crowley’s hands move down to his hips.

 

    “Yes…”

 

    “You know, love, I would not deny you anything tonight?” He asks, trembling in Crowley’s arms now, as he makes that final little effort. “I would give myself to you completely.”

 

    “Only if you’re comfortable, there’s still plenty we can do.” Crowley promises, arms sliding around Aziraphale, hands caressing his back, sliding up to rub gentle circles right where his wings would sprout…

 

    He loves Aziraphale’s wings. He loves Aziraphale’s entire body, of course, and makes no secret of it, but his wings… They seem delicate. He imagines if he didn’t have wings of his own, he’d be inclined to think of them that way, mistake them for being like a bird’s, with hollow, breakable bones, with thin planes of muscle, mistake them for being somehow easy to hurt. But an angel’s wings are far from delicate. Oh, it’s possible for them to be hurt, and they’re certainly _sensitive_ , but ethereal strength courses through them. They’re made of sterner stuff than mere bone and muscle. And Aziraphale’s are powerful. Crowley knows what it is to be shielded by them, to be wrapped up in them, and he knows the joy of watching them at work when Aziraphale flies, invisible to mortal eyes but plain to his own.

 

    Since becoming lovers, he’s groomed them, too. Felt himself sink into the joy of that half-holy communion, felt Aziraphale shiver and moan in delight. Felt the softness of his feathers and the crackling divinity at the core of him through that act…

 

    The first time they’d made love, Aziraphale’s wings had come out. So had his own, for that matter. Since then, it hasn’t always happened that way, though once or twice they’ve started with them out. Crowley can’t think of anything quite like being surrounded by them, with the pleasure of their bodies rutting together, to be in Aziraphale’s lap, to be tented in the circle of those wings as they kiss and touch and rock together…

 

    Just to touch the place where his wings currently aren’t feels intimate, feels special. This is something no mortal could know… he feels sorry for them, though only fleetingly, that they lack this. Just to trace his fingertips over the back of a shoulder is electric and divine. A touch he could give in public, even. Aziraphale might scold him for grabbing at his thighs or his arse when out for an evening, might say even in his club where other couples casually rest a hand on hip or backside that they shouldn’t, but they could slow dance, with his hand right there at the back of Aziraphale’s shoulder… no one would know the overwhelming personal nature of such a touch. No one but the two of them.

 

    As ever it was.

 

    “I want you to take me.” Aziraphale says, voice soft, lips at his ear. “I want you to show me… show me how good it can feel?”

 

    “Angel, I’ll make you feel _so_ good.” He promises. “Beyond your wildest dreams. You’ll be howling my name, love, that’s a promise.”

 

    “Oh, my _dear_ …”

 

    “That’s it, I’ve got you… you just have to come with me, I’ve got you.” Crowley leads him to their bed. He’s still not over the fact it’s their bed… Night after night, he falls asleep at Aziraphale’s side-- or while using him as a pillow, or while welcoming Aziraphale to do the same-- and every morning he’s woken with kisses and cups of tea or coffee, promises of breakfast, fingers running through his hair. Every morning Aziraphale looks at him with fondness and warmth, asks him if he has anything he wants to do with his day, or asks if he finds Aziraphale’s own plans agreeable…

 

    Crowley shows Aziraphale just where he wants him, straddling his chest so that he can lower himself back into position. He kneads at his thighs a long moment, urging him to relax.

 

    “It’s all right… look, if you hate it, you tell me to stop, you lean up away from me, we do something else.” He says, stroking and squeezing. He knows how to soothe with a touch, knows how to help Aziraphale relax. It’s purely a bonus that he also enjoys doing it-- how could he not enjoy massaging at those _plush_ thighs? He’s literally an inhuman monster, a demon, and yet he can’t imagine how awful and loveless and irredeemable someone would have to be, not to find the pleasure in just gently massaging Aziraphale’s perfect thick thighs. Soft and squeezable, but if you dig down deep, there’s powerful muscle beneath the fat, there’s a hidden strength in him. Crowley is well acquainted with the pleasure to be had thanks to those thighs-- whether it’s the power in them when Aziraphale fucks him, or the perfection that is burying his cock between them and feeling Aziraphale press tight around him… Or just this, their ability to hold Aziraphale in a desired position, and how sweet it is to touch them.

 

    Aziraphale leans forward, gripping the bedsheets at Crowley’s sides, leans himself back into position at last with an anticipatory sigh. Crowley’s hands slide up to squeeze at his arse, to spread him open. He can’t resist a little nip to the curve of one cheek, grinning at the little sound Aziraphale makes. He delivers a couple more bites, laves over them just to put Aziraphale at ease, before he works his way in.

 

    It feels good, feels natural, to let his tongue lengthen out… he spreads Aziraphale wide for him, exposing that pristine hole. He teases the perineum first, with little flicks of a forked tongue, and when Aziraphale feels good and ready for him, he does the same over his hole, reveling in the responding twitch of muscle.

 

    Aziraphale’s uncertainties melt away at the first teasing touch of that tongue. The way the two delicate prongs stroke over the most sensitive skin, how quickly he finds himself quivering for more… and Crowley takes his time with him, tongue swirling around, hot and wet, disappearing, returning… spreading saliva around, wet and viscous, before dipping in. He feels himself give way, eager, his body reacting as readily as it had learned to do for his fingers that first time they’d experimented… that first time he’d even had a hole to explore.

 

    It’s not just the way it feels, though, it’s the sounds Crowley makes, carnal, lascivious, _lustful_ sounds, wet sounds, transcendently animal sounds… the need drips from each one, the desire, and to be the center of that, to be that most wanted thing… Crowley has discovered a knack for making him feel loved, and this is no exception. And the tongue that enters him at last is long and strong and so smoothly mobile, like nothing else he’s felt so far.

 

    There’s something intoxicating in being brought such pleasure, and there is something intoxicating in being the one to bring it. They soar on that high together. They respond to each other’s desire, they move to each other’s need, they find that place where they bleed into each other in essence. Never enough, it’s never enough… it won’t be enough until every border is erased, until there is only one united self. But they come close sometimes, they sink into something that very nearly takes away all ego, all separation. They sink into something sweet that only the two of them could ever share.

 

    Crowley digs his hands in deeper, spreads Aziraphale wider, feels him push his hips back for more as he lowers himself carefully down on his elbows, feels Aziraphale’s mouth wet and open against his abdomen, feels him muffle a keening cry there as Crowley’s tongue reaches his prostate, as Aziraphale’s wings burst out in a beautiful flash, spread wide. Lucky them that their bedroom is spacious enough to allow for his full wingspan, and Crowley goes harder, thrilling to the knowledge that he’d led to this loss of control.

 

    It takes some work, but the thrill of it when Aziraphale comes untouched, thanks to his tongue, shoots his release out over Crowley’s chest. It’s a long moment before he can even think about moving, it’s all he can do to hold himself on hands and knees as he recovers.

 

    “Mm, sexy thing…” Crowley’s hands slide down the backs of his thighs, up again. He gives one cheek a gentle tap, watching the way the flesh jiggles, grinning at the little yelp. He presses a kiss to the spot before helping Aziraphale to move, to turn around and lie on his front, wings still spread. He watches as they lazily retract, not to disappear but to fold comfortably on his back.

 

    “That was… You were… _Wonderful_.” He sighs.

 

    Crowley kisses the joint of one wing, nuzzling at the ruffled feathers when Aziraphale squirms.

 

    “You’re wonderful.” He grins. “I’m not remotely done with you… I get my fun, don’t I? Don’t I, Aziraphale? You won’t deny me my fun?”

 

    “I won’t deny you _anything_.”

 

    “Is that a promise? And if I asked to fuck that sweet arse of yours? Bury myself in you, take you rough? I don’t have to-- I can take you so many ways and enjoy myself. If it’s too much, I won’t. But I’d like to. I’d like to see how far I can take you, like to see if I could make you come again… couldn’t I make you come again, angel?”

 

    He feels the shiver run through that wing, and nuzzles in deeper, letting the feathers tickle his nose. There’s a scent there, warm and dusty, when he nuzzles all the way to the down. Dust and vanilla and sunshine, old books and sweet, milky tea and clean laundry. If love had a scent, it would be this, the safe and homey aroma deep within those feathers. He preens at a ruffled patch, knowing it’s only going to be ruffled again the next time they come out-- though he can’t say he’d be sorry to need to preen him all over again then.

 

    “Please…” Aziraphale moans.

 

    “Let me get a pillow under you, there’s a good angel…” He coos, urging Aziraphale’s hips up and sliding one into place. “That’s it, you just relax right there… That’s all you need to do, love, is relax. I’m going to take good care of you.”

 

    “And you’ll take what you need.”

 

    “And I’ll take what I need. No worry about that, I’ll take what I need. Oh, you’re so _sweet_ … you’re so deliciously sweet, all of you… could bury myself in you forever. _Aziraphale_ , I could bury myself in you forever… you’re so strong, and so soft, and so warm. You don’t know how it feels to make you mine all mine.”

 

    The taboo of it is something, of course, but not half as much as the trust. That an angel should spread himself out before him like a banquet, that an angel should offer to will new and secret parts of himself into existence for Crowley alone to take pleasure in… that an angel should look at a demon and think him worthy of love, him above all others. The way Aziraphale loves him, it’s like all the old broken parts of his heart are whole again. All the things he’d ever lost his faith in and all the times he’d ever been hurt, he can let them go. Aziraphale understands. Aziraphale is here to catch him. Aziraphale is ready to trust Crowley to catch him in return.

 

    It’s too much, sometimes, but he doesn’t know how to be without it now.

 

    He grabs the lubricant from the nightstand drawer, slicking himself up first before giving Aziraphale just a little more prep. Thrilling to the whimpers when he does. So sensitive, his angel… and fair’s fair, Aziraphale has pushed him past his own limits before, driven him insensate on pleasure. He’d loved it, of course. He thinks Aziraphale will, too.

 

    Crowley does not consider it a frivolous use of his powers to vanish all traces of lube from his hand, once he’s slid into Aziraphale’s waiting body-- and oh, the soft _sound_ he’d made, such a weak little gasp of a sound, as if he hadn’t the strength left even to whimper for him…

 

    “That’s it, angel, that’s right…” He sighs, and Aziraphale spreads his wings open again, to allow Crowley to press forward against his back, to kiss the nape of his neck. He sighs, at the feel of soft, warm feathers tickling at the sides of his chest. A little shift and he can deliberately drag his nipple past them to tease himself, and it’s good, it’s wonderful, but it’s not _everything_.

 

    He licks at the back of Aziraphale’s neck, drinking in the barely-there musk of him, something unlike any human, any earthly creature. He kisses his way down, thrilling to the little cry when he laps at the space between Aziraphale’s wings, when he lets his tongue edge too close to one and then the other. When at last he runs his tongue through the scapulars.

 

    “It’s too much, it’s too much!” Aziraphale gasps, hands tearing at the bedsheets.

 

    “Is it?” Crowley grins, preening at the spot. “Then should I stop?”

 

    “Don’t you dare!”

 

    “Wouldn’t dream of it, angel.” He promises, with another kiss.

 

    He grabs hold of both wings then, right at the patagium, for the leverage they allow him, dragging Aziraphale onto his cock and crying out with him this time. His own come out, he wraps them around the two of them, shifts so that from carpal edge to wingtip his own wings might rest against Aziraphale’s, might add to the depth and sweetness of their union.

 

    With every thrust, he finds Aziraphale’s prostate. It would be so easy to let himself go, to give into more than mere physical sensation, but there’s more he could give if he just holds out a little longer… there’s more he could give, for as long as Aziraphale can bear it.

 

    “Beautiful thing…” He hisses, with a slow roll of his hips, with his fingers dragging down through Aziraphale’s feathers. “Some days you’re the only bright spot in this world, did you know? For all I love it at its best, when it’s the worst the world’s been, you’re still in it to make it sweet for me. Aziraphale, Aziraphale… if there was nothing else to love in it, I’d want the world for you alone…”

 

    He’s wanted to put words to it… Since the night the basket was pushed into his hands, he’d wanted to be able to tell Aziraphale that the world was worth saving because it was theirs, because there was nowhere else the two of them could _be_ , but back then they’d barely been able to call themselves friends-- not because they weren’t, and had been for a long time, but because it was fragile for eons, difficult to talk about, dangerous to admit to. He’d wanted to tell him then, when he’d realized how little time they might have and how precious it might be, and been afraid to. That he loved him, that he had done for a long time… And even as they’d grabbed at this for themselves, even as they’d learned to love each other with the sweet abandon long craved, he’d never been able to work these words out before.

 

    He’ll need to do better, when they’re both a bit clearer-headed, he thinks. For now, it’s enough. It’s a start. And he trusts that Aziraphale understands.

 

    He holds back on his own pleasure still, and varies up his speed, his power. Whether he grips at Aziraphale’s hips or his wings to position him, or whether he ruffles and preens his feathers. Whether he leaves gentle kisses to the back of his neck, or hot wet ones, or firm bites with sharp teeth… or whether the kissing and the biting and the licking travel down the smooth line of his back. Whether he teases again at that first wing joint. He uses his lips to gently tug at scapular feathers, when he’s not burrowing into them with his nose, his tongue. His breath is hot against freshly-licked skin, and stirs all the way to the down when it ghosts over a wing.

 

    And Aziraphale… Aziraphale is so beautifully lost on the tide of pleasure, mewling and gasping and crying for him, deep, thick sobs that Crowley can feel shake him to his core, to the places they connect.

 

    And the sweetest sound of all, when Crowley just barely lets his teeth close around the patagium, hand working up under the wing to ruffle through the axillaries. He rakes through them and feels Aziraphale’s whole body heave.

 

    “Shh, shh, love…” His hand stills, as do his hips, he kisses the spot his teeth had been. “Aziraphale, Aziraphale… Angel, are you with me?”

 

    A ragged little cry, and he kisses him again.

 

    “I need you with me, Aziraphale, I need to know you’re here. Need to know you can safeword if you need to.”

 

    “No… no, don’t-- don’t stop!”

 

    “You’re with me?”

 

    “Right with you, oh, _Crowley_ … Crowley, please, I-- please, I-- please, I need you!”

 

    “Shh…” He preens at him gently, straightening the axillaries back out, running his nose along the patagium and then down over the coverts. “I’m going to take care of you. Promise. You believe me?”

 

    Aziraphale nods, twisting to try and look back at him. His cheeks are wet-- or at least his left cheek is. Crowley laps at the track of his tears, getting something between a giggle and a sob.

 

    “That’s my good boy, hm?” He nuzzles at Aziraphale’s jaw, and slides a hand underneath him, over the curve of his belly and up, up to rest trapped beneath his heart. “That’s my angel. So sweet for me… I’m going to take care of you.”

 

    He lets himself go at last, not merely his self control, but everything about him that keeps him separate from Aziraphale in the moment, everything that makes him his own demon. This time, it works, it happens. This time, everything that is Aziraphale envelopes him and enters him. This time, they’re one on that highest level, and Aziraphale’s pleasure is his, and his Aziraphale’s.

 

    It takes some time to sort himself back out after, as he withdraws, as he miracles the mess away to avoid any more touch to his over-sensitized lover. He watches Aziraphale simply lie there, breathing, and he resists the urge to groom him right away. Only once Aziraphale has had a bit of time does he even dare a touch to his cheek, does he even dare to stroke his hair. Such gorgeous curls… well, if not the sort one pictures when one thinks of angelic curls. Not at all like that, in fact, but Crowley likes them as they are.

 

    “All right?” He asks.

 

    “ _Oh_ , yes.”

 

    “Good. D’you want a bath?”

 

    “Shower.”

 

    Crowley chuckles and lifts Aziraphale out of bed, carrying him to their bath. The luxurious shower with the six showerheads and the stone bench. He adjusts everything, so that Aziraphale can rest there on the bench and enjoy a gentle warm rain. He offers him his choice of shampoos, feeling rather pleased when Aziraphale selects Crowley’s usual rather than his own, and he massages his scalp, and gently rinses the suds away. He is methodical in bathing him-- his shoulders, his arms, his chest. His back, then his belly, then his thighs, his calves, his feet. He kneels to get all of him, and then he turns off the water and takes up the special brush, and goes over Aziraphale’s wings.

 

    He towels him off gently once his wings have been folded away, and steals a kiss, slow and warm.

 

    “Cocoa?” He offers. “Will you be all right if I go down and make you a proper cup?”

 

    “Yes, dear, that sounds _lovely_.” Aziraphale nods, his gaze utterly lovestruck.

 

    “Good. You wait in bed for me and I won’t be a minute with your cocoa… maybe, as someone’s been such a delight, a little something to nibble on.” He kisses him again, drops several more across his cheeks and to his still-damp curls. “Darling angel, what I did to deserve you, I’ll never know.”

 

    “Everything, my dear. You’ve done everything.” He sighs, and leans heavily on Crowley’s arm for the short walk back to their bed.

 

    “You knocked the lamp over when your wings came out.” Crowley points out, with a smug grin. He gets Aziraphale tucked in before righting it. “Someone must have given you that good loving.”

 

    “Mm, yes, someone must have.” He chuckles, wriggling down into bed. “Someone must have been _wonderful_ to me.”

 

    “He sounds very handsome, this mystery man of yours.”

 

    Aziraphale giggles, and Crowley pats his thigh.

 

    “I’ll be right back, now, you just relax. Yeah?”

 

    “Yes, dear.”

 

    “Good, that’s good. You know I won’t be long?”

 

    “Just long enough to fix a cup of cocoa, I know.”

 

    “All right. A cup of cocoa and a little something to eat. And if you feel lonely, you just close your eyes and listen and you’ll hear me knocking around the kitchen if you concentrate.”

 

    He moves back in to kiss Aziraphale’s forehead, before he can tear away to head down to the kitchen. He digs out a package of biscuits while the milk is heating, figuring any crumbs can just be vanished as necessary, and he lets it cool on the counter once made, just long enough to grab a book from the living room, where he’d been certain he’d seen Aziraphale reading poetry the other day.

 

    Aziraphale, for his part, thinks he waits very patiently, considering how keenly he feels the lack of Crowley. They’d been one being only a little while ago, and now to be in separate rooms is nearly unbearable, but they are only in separate rooms because he’d said yes to cocoa… and he can bear it, he can.

 

    Still, it is a physical relief to have his return, to be kissed and urged to sit up. To be fed cocoa-soaked bites of biscuit while his hair is played with. And, when the cocoa is finished and the cup set aside, he is welcomed to curl into the crook of Crowley’s arm, to rest against his shoulder, to cuddle close.

 

    “The grey sea and the long black land;” Crowley reads, and Aziraphale relaxes even more fully against him. “And the yellow half-moon large and low…”


	10. After Six Thousand Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley poses a question.

    “You’re over-tired, I think.” Aziraphale says. He feels too hot, stiflingly hot. If he needed to breathe, he wouldn’t be able to. It was supposed to be a mild day, and yet out in the garden he feels as if he’s in the greenhouse in the middle of a summer day. “Go and have a lie-down, the rest of the work will keep. Do you think-- oh, I think last night’s sushi is not agreeing with me, particularly. Do you feel it isn’t agreeing with you?”

 

    “No, I don’t feel the _sushi_ isn’t agreeing with me, angel. I don’t think you do, either.”

 

    “You are being ridiculous.”

 

    “All part and parcel of my charm. Well?”

 

    “The past eleven years… everything with the boy, the Dowlings, and the-- the _boys_ , the other boy, with Armageddon, and with-- with everything! With working together like that, I mean, with-- and just seeing each other so regularly and dividing the work, and everything we’ve… we’ve _done_ , as part of the… very recent phase in our… _Arrangement_ , the past… the past… all of it! Whatever time we might have discussed the matter, I mean, it hardly even seems _relevant_. It hardly seems it should _matter_.”

 

    “The first time I ever spoke to you, outside the garden-- coming up to you, I mean.” Crowley fidgets, bravado faltering, something honest taking its place. “I was scared, too.”

 

    “Scared.” Aziraphale scoffs. “I was… not _scared_.”

 

    “Nervous?”

 

    “Nervous.” He agrees.

 

    “But I knew I wanted to, and I knew if I didn’t somehow I’d… That if we didn’t know each other, I’d… regret that. I wanted to talk to you. Because we were the same-- not the same, but same-ish. On the outside of things, watching humanity. Figuring things out. I wanted to not figure it out alone, and what I’m asking now is, don’t you?”

 

    “We haven’t figured it out alone, we’ve very much figured anything we have figured out over the past six thousand years _together_.” He says, just a little snappish.

 

    “So?”

 

    “Crowley…” Aziraphale’s voice is soft. Not addressing him, only reflecting _on_ him. “The eleven years we’ve spent averting the end of the world-- No, the thousand years we’ve had our Arrangement-- No. No. The _six_ _thousand_ years that we have known each other and the six months that we have had this house together, I-- Well dash it all, Crowley, if I didn’t love you, would I even be here? Would either of us?”

 

    He turns around, in time to see Crowley break out into a grin so bright he needs to turn away from it again. It hardly matters-- a pair of strong arms winds around him from behind, Crowley’s sharp chin digging into a rounded shoulder.

 

    “You _love_ me.” He grins, and his tongue flicks out to tease Aziraphale’s ear.

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “In that case, I love you, too.” He nuzzles in.

 

    “Silly old serpent…” Aziraphale reaches back, burying fingers in his hair. “What it even matters to say it _now_ , I don’t hardly know.”

 

    “Feels nice.”

 

    “Yes, my _dearest_ love.” He smiles, relaxing into Crowley’s embrace. “It does that.”


	11. Endearments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The things they call each other.

- _Angel_ -

 

    "Angel." Crowley sighs, curled around Aziraphale in bed. It slips out familiar and easy. Fond.

 

    It wasn't, at first. The first time he'd called him 'angel' it had been warily polite. They were still essentially strangers. He addressed him thus because Aziraphale was an angel. Somewhere along the line, Aziraphale was no longer an angel, but _the_ angel. It became something Crowley couldn't fathom calling any other angel, in any tone. And then... well, and then it had been easy, just to use it now and then, and easy to hear it. And then, somewhere along the line, somewhere in the years leading up to the un-end of the world, it had come to mean he was _Crowley's_ angel, had come to mean something as earthly as all Crowley's endearments. If Aziraphale were to Fall tomorrow, Crowley would call him 'angel' still.

 

    Aziraphale sets his book to the side, and cranes his neck for a kiss.

 

- _Dear_ -

 

    Aziraphale calls everyone 'my dear', of course, and sometimes he expands upon it-- my dear man, my dear lady, my dear child. At some point, 'boy' had become Crowley's alone, though it hadn't always been. But sometimes he is only 'dear'. No different and yet so different from everybody else.

 

    It's the warmth in his tone, which is a touch warmer for Crowley. Even when his voice drips with reproach, it's fonder for him than for anyone else. It's just for him, in a way, even if to the rest of the world, it doesn't seem that way.

 

- _Babe_ -

 

    Crowley calls him 'baby' sometimes, in bed, his voice soft and pleading, it tumbles out over and over again and sounds like a prayer. Aziraphale is 'baby' when Crowley needs him sweet, when he can't get enough of him, when he's desperate for him. But he's 'babe' in casual moments. With a hand at his hip or a kiss to his cheek, with light warmth and affection. He can be 'babe' in public, and never 'baby', Crowley will greet him that way when they meet up for lunch, or in the park.

 

    He'd started using 'babe' in the 1970s, in fact, a bit before they'd begun moving towards romantic couplehood. He'd said it was what cool detectives called each other on American television, and slung his arm around Aziraphale's shoulders, and Aziraphale had blushed and allowed it. Encouraged it, really.

 

- _Dearest_ -

 

    "Oh, my dearest Crowley..." Sighed, with the gentlest intensity, into Crowley's chest, as it had been the very first time.

 

    They hadn't been a them, then. They wouldn't be for near to three hundred year, by Crowley's estimation. They were friends, but how good of friends, he couldn't have said. He'd been 'dear' often enough, or he'd been 'my dear boy', at least. He hadn't thought he was special... only maybe familiar. He'd pulled Aziraphale after a spot of trouble, the kind he could easily have gotten himself out of, and Crowley wasn't sure why he hadn't. Some kind of rule about when to use a miracle, he'd guess, if Aziraphale wasn't always using miracles for little things that didn't require one.

 

    He doesn't remember exactly what had happened and how, he remembers the way Aziraphale had fallen into his arms, and how he had called him _dearest_ , and how it had felt to be 'dearest' for the very first time. To hold Aziraphale and feel him tremble as if he hadn't been perfectly safe all along.

 

    And now, to have Aziraphale call him 'dearest' so often, to hold him in his arms and be placed above all others this way... what more could he ask, from a world that already provides so much?

 

- _Sweetheart_ -

 

    They're dancing cheek to cheek, something neither of them is any good at, to a record pressed in 1911 that Crowley is sure is Aziraphale's, though Aziraphale claims it's Crowley's. And it's Crowley who croons softly into Aziraphale's ear, feeling him melt.

 

    "Oh, please..." He sighs, and clings so much closer, and they're barely swaying now.

 

    "Sweetheart... sweetheart... let me take you to bed tonight." Crowley whispers, and each 'sweetheart' hisses softly on his tongue, and Aziraphale swoons to it, thrills to it. He would go to bed with him any time he asked-- or near enough-- but somehow this feels special.

 

- _Dearheart_ -

 

    They've only been apart two days, a quick trip over to the continent, a little temptation and a little ecstasy, but nowadays a weekend is enough. And 'dearheart' may be another variation on the same, but it feels special, when Crowley balls himself up in Aziraphale's lap and hears it, 'oh dearheart', whispered into his hair.

 

    "Oh, _dearheart_..." As Aziraphale strokes his back, as he kisses his temple. As he warms him after two days of cold. As Crowley slowly feels himself loosen from something frozen and taut into something which can only exist here in the soft lap, in the gentle circle of Aziraphale's arms.

 

- _Honey_ -

 

    It's a husky whisper smothered against the back of Aziraphale's neck, as he stands at the counter waiting for the kettle. His hands grasping at hips, clutching him tight and keeping him close. It makes him shiver. And it's a husky whisper when they walk in the park, when they go to lunch.

 

    And sometimes, when they're having tea, and Crowley offers up a spoonful of honey, it's with a certain lilt to his voice, that has Aziraphale longing for the touch of his hand, just a little more than usual...

 

- _Darling_ -

 

    Darling, when Aziraphale is feeling flowery, is feeling indulgent. Darling, when he wants to spoil Crowley with little tastes of this and that. Darling, when he wants to lead him back to their bed and massage him into easy compliance, when he wants to preen him or draw him a hot bath. Darling, when he wants to show how much he truly _cares_ , and how special Crowley is to him.

 

    Darling, when he wants to say 'I know how much you love me, too'.

 

- _Dove_ -

 

    He'd called Aziraphale 'turtledove', once, as a joke. It had come into fashion as an endearment, they had been somewhere together. He had offered his arm to escort him over a rough bit of road, though goodness knows Aziraphale had never needed it, and he'd mockingly suggested he throw his cloak down across a puddle, and Aziraphale had laughed, had smacked his shoulder gently and called him bad, in that encouraging way of his.

 

    Aziraphale's wings are nothing like a dove's, not really. And yet Crowley can't think of anything with feathers which is as soft, as sweet, as pretty, as plump. He thinks, at least, that Aziraphale feels more flattered by 'my dove' than he would by 'my chicken'. Crowley thinks either is a proper pet name, but there's no arguing one _sounds_ prettier. And Aziraphale, already so pliable and adoring when he's being preened, always reacts so sweetly to being Crowley's little dove...

 

- _Beast_ -

 

    "Oh, you _wicked_ beast!" Aziraphale moves Crowley's hand very firmly from where it has crept up his thigh, back down to his knee. He's pink in the cheeks, fighting a grin.

 

    A grin is one thing Crowley _isn't_ fighting. He leans in close, rests his sharp chin on Aziraphale's shoulder, his other hand moving to Aziraphale's hip, only to be moved up just above the waist. Aziraphale has such ideas about what is and isn't appropriate in public, though this particular summer evening in the park, there aren't many people passing by their bench. And those who do can certainly handle seeing two man-shaped creatures engaging in the lightest of hanky-panky.

 

    "What am I?" He asks, sliding one hand up, the other down, until he's smacked away gently-- though with a look that suggests it isn't a serious rebuke.

 

    "A _beast_." Aziraphale bites his lip. "A wicked... naughty... _insatiable_ beast. _Oh_! Crowley!"

 

    Crowley does not apologize at all, for the bite to Aziraphale's neck, delivered with a wholly unnecessary growl. He just laughs against him, enjoying the playful squabbling as he kisses him to his heart's content. Sometimes a demon just likes to feel proper menacing, after all...

 

- _Hot Stuff_ -

 

    Brightly spoken, both hands coming to smack against Aziraphale's backside, before giving a firm squeeze. Or whispered in his ear, joining him at his club. A passing bit of attention or an earnest come on, one that makes Aziraphale blush every time. He denies it every time, as well, and squirms and stammers, even as he's glad to be drawn on to bed.

 

    And every time, Crowley smiles, his gaze warm. And every time he tells him 'Well, hot stuff, I would know'.

 

- _Lover_ -

 

    "Lover, be good to me." Aziraphale, breathless, his hand cupping Crowley's cheek as they lie together in bed, as he _invites_.

 

    "Lover, don't be late." Aziraphale, on the phone, spurring Crowley to call a business trip short.

 

    "Lover, come to bed." Aziraphale, in the doorway, his eyes trailing over Crowley's body, half-dressed as he's been gardening.

 

    _Lover_ , Aziraphale says, the word heavy with ancient meaning. _Lover_ , Aziraphale says, and it means so much more than boyfriend, husband, partner. _Lover_ , Aziraphale says, and he means _pursuer_ , he means _the one who chases_ , he means  _the one who spoils_ , he means  _the one who takes care of me_ , he means _the one who guides me to the act of love_.

 

    In short, he calls Crowley 'lover' when he wants to be _fucked_.

 

    "Lover..." Aziraphale, red-faced and quiet, leaning across their usual table. "Could we take dessert to go?"

 

- _Pet_ -

 

    There's no other name that will do, at times like this. When Aziraphale is so sweet. When he kneels and rests his cheek against Crowley's leg. When he sighs so soft, when he clings, when he relaxes. When he glows at having Crowley's fingers scratching gentle through his hair, when he rests in his lap. When he looks up with wide eyes or closes them in tender trust. When he seems somehow smaller than he should, when there is no sign of his prickliness or his smugness, and only the most agreeable and cuddly parts of his loving self are left, what else can Crowley call him?

 

   _Pet_. Something precious to be protected. _Pet_. Something adorable to be spoiled. _Pet_. Something special to be cared for.

 

    _Pet_. Someone who is only Crowley's, to do all these things for.

 

- _Serpent_ -

 

    Sometimes, and Crowley will never know what he does to earn it, Aziraphale looks at him... He looks at him with the full force of six thousand years of love, and he whispers to him. He touches his face so gently, and he gazes straight down into whatever passes for a demon's soul, and he floods him with divinity that has nothing to do with his angelic nature. Sometimes, Aziraphale loves him almost more than he can stand.

 

    Sometimes, and Crowley isn't sure it's possible to earn it, Aziraphale looks at him as if he's worth the world and more.

 

   "You old serpent..." He says, in moments like these, and his voice adoring as his gaze. "I know you of old."

 

- _Beloved_ -

 

   "Beloved." Crowley whispers, taking Aziraphale by the hand. He leads him away, draws him into a quiet room.

 

    "Beloved." Aziraphale answers, and he draws out a ring.

 

    _Beloved_ , and their voices shake. _Beloved_ , and their hands do, too. _Beloved_ , and soft wings surround them. _Beloved_ , and nothing really changes, but the world once more feels new.


	12. Beastly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley are constrained by mere biology, where sexual expression is concerned...
> 
> Aziraphale engages in the occasional variety. Crowley is just... beastly.

    “Dearest…” Aziraphale says, with the sort of tone he usually reserves for reminding Crowley of some fault to be made up for-- gently, it’s not his pissily reproachful tone, more a ‘would you mind terribly’ than a ‘you really ought to’.

 

    Crowley can’t think of anything he’s done for Aziraphale to be less than pleased about, but he lifts his head from where it’s rested against the perfect pillow of Aziraphale’s thigh, blinking at him.

 

    “Mm?” He prompts, stroking along that same thigh.

 

    “You’ve gone down on me three times since I’ve, erm-- made this particular _change_ for the week-end…”

 

    Crowley grins, dipping his head back down to deliver a sharp little nip-- to the other thigh, this time. “So _prim_. Isn’t there any word you want to use for it?”

 

    “There is _not_.” He sniffs.

 

    He’d made an effort in rather the opposite direction, for a bit of an exciting change-up-- he’d referred to himself as a _gift_ , suggested Crowley might enjoy some _variety_ , and Crowley had been predictably enthusiastic, had only _stopped_ eating him out to let him breathe a bit and have a quick nap, but if Aziraphale is ready for more, well…

 

    “I can make it four.” He promises. “If you plan on keeping it all weekend, there’s no telling how many times--”

 

    “That’s not what I meant. You know I love your tongue, my dear, but-- well… when I put the new anatomy in, I was rather expecting you might…”

 

    “Might?” Crowley nuzzles his way higher, tongue flicking out, catching the scent of him. Aroused, already, just from what he’s been thinking about, just from the proximity…

 

    “Oh-- _you_ know…”

 

    Crowley traces the tip of his tongue up and down the new shape of him. It’s not that he likes it any better than the usual effort, but the fact that it’s different, the fact that it’s _temporary_ , makes it irresistible.

 

    “Crowley, _please_ …” Aziraphale squirms, spreads his legs wider. There’s such a lovely little _whine_ to his voice, and the rocking of his hips… the _desperation_ beneath the desire.

 

    After three goes, Crowley knows exactly what Aziraphale likes, likes when he teases his clit out and catches it in the notch of his forked tongue, but this time, Aziraphale just makes that needy keening noise of his, the one Crowley usually teases out of him by denying him what he needs, and pushes him away.

 

    “Crowley, I _ache_ for you.”

 

    “And I’m here trying to get you off, so what’s the problem?”

 

    “I mean… I mean I _ache_ , I _burn_ , I mean every entryway to my body longs to be _filled_ by you.” He squirms. Blushes, too.

 

    “Every entryway?” Crowley’s eyebrows climb up towards his hairline, interest very much piqued. “What, at the same time?”

 

    At the same time indeed, going by the way Aziraphale shivers, the tiny moan he fails to stifle at the thought.

 

    “You greedy thing!” Crowley grins. “You gave yourself all this new stuff and you kept your prostate?”

 

    “Why shouldn’t I keep it?”

 

    “ _Glutton_.” He laughs, and nips very gently at him. “A prostate and a g spot, and you want me on both of them at once? Knowing you, you want that pretty mouth of yours stuffed as well, you always do. Filthy, greedy angel, you. Imagine! Imagine what they’d have to say about you, you wanton. And I’m supposed to do all that at once, am I? I’m meant to satisfy _you_? That’s a lot of job for one demon, you know.”

 

    “And you’re the demon for the job.” Aziraphale reaches for him, strokes along his jaw, looks at him with such an overwhelming desire… “And I _need_ you…”

 

    He’s helpless, really he is. Being looked at that way, being hit with that kind of want. There’s something about an angel’s lust, an angel’s gluttony, it’s finer than wine and it leaves him a better class of intoxicated. But more than that, that it should be _his_ angel, still so _good_ and so loving… and so utterly filthily greedy for his touch alone.

 

    He could never deny him what he needs. No, the moment Aziraphale begs, all resolve to tease flees him, he can only satisfy. This, though…

 

    “Roll onto your side, come here…” He moves, getting Aziraphale positioned as he wants him, legs tucked up, poised right at the edge of the bed. “Can we do this on the honor system, or should I blindfold you?”

 

    “Oh, _please_ … please, love, would you?”

 

    “Of course.” Crowley chuckles, summons his own satin sleep mask to hand to slip over Aziraphale’s eyes. “There you go, pet, safe in the dark, just you and me… and I’m going to take good care of you. You just relax and let it all happen.”

 

    Aziraphale cuddles Crowley’s pillow to his chest and relaxes, trusting Crowley to ease his desperate need. Crowley, for his part, doesn’t waste any time getting him opened up, one hand slicked up and easing one hole open, one hand teasing the other until he’s wet and ready.

 

    He miracles the one hand clean, he licks the other-- makes more sound doing so than necessary, just to watch Aziraphale react.

 

    And then, there’s… the _effort_. For most of the past six thousand years, he’s had the same basic arrangement, though over time he’s refined it. He _likes_ his dick. He likes how it looks, likes how it feels to just have it _there_. And of course, Aziraphale has never had any complaints. But… under the circumstances, well…

 

    Sure, he could get a toy, but Aziraphale hadn’t said ‘I want you to get the toys out, Crowley’, he’d said he needed to be filled by _him_. And, well, it’s not like he’s never had…

 

    It’s surprisingly familiar, for how long it’s been. A bit strange having them just out where a human penis belongs, and he never actually _used_ the old double-act. He and Aziraphale didn’t really have that kind of relationship, back in Eden, and it’s not like he had any interest in getting it on with an actual snake. But he’d _had_ it.

 

    “All right, angel… all right, darling…” He coos, and slips those licked-clean fingers into Aziraphale’s mouth. “That’s it, pet, _suck_ for me.”

 

    Aziraphale hums around them, as Crowley works the first side in-- it takes a little guidance, but he just needs to be sure he won’t slip free, just needs to work one hemipene into Aziraphale first, angle his hips just so… It’s a little slenderer, blunt-ended, it changes something about the way it feels to be inside him, inside that perfect arse…

 

    “Mm… oh-- _oh_ , what’s that one?” Aziraphale asks, pulling off of Crowley’s fingers-- he’d complain, but he needs that hand to guide himself in in the front. “That feels different, that-- Oh! What are you using down there? Is that new?”

 

    “Hush.” Crowley teases at Aziraphale’s lips-- plush as the rest of him, soft and enticingly smeared with the evidence of his arousal, not _stretched_ around him exactly but around him-- before giving his fingers another loud and sloppy tongue-cleaning. He returns them, wet with saliva, to Aziraphale’s mouth. “It’s very old, actually.”

 

    He pushes in, groaning at the feel of Aziraphale snug around him, both of him, of the way it feels… such a narrow wall separates the two hemipenes from each other, he can feel himself to either side. How had he not thought of this the moment Aziraphale unveiled the new equipment? Plunging deep into him, taking him all at once?

 

    Aziraphale moans, one hand leaving its place clutching at his pillow in order to cling to Crowley’s wrist. He licks and sucks at his fingers with all the desperate gusto he might give a blowjob-- and there’s a thought, Aziraphale kneeling before him, going back and forth, one always rubbing against his cheek to smear him with precome… What a pretty sight he’d be.

 

    Of course, that’s assuming he’d be into giving a blowjob to a hemipenis, but he _might_. He might… he might be all right with it.

 

    “You feel so good…” Crowley drapes himself over Aziraphale’s side, soaking up the warmth as he continues to roll his hips. Aziraphale rocks his hips in circles, squeezes around him just so and moans around his fingers.

 

    He pulls off of his fingers, licking around them, between them, before sucking them in again, and he moans when Crowley strokes teasingly at his tongue.

 

    “That’s right, that’s right, you’re all filled up now, aren’t you?... I’ve got you… I’m going to take such good care of you, you won’t hardly be able to stand it, that what you want?” He nips at his shoulder, grabs a handful of arse for a squeeze before giving him a little smack.

 

    The three fingers deep in his mouth muffle Aziraphale’s yelp, at that.

 

    “Ohh, I know… big, bad demon, treating you so mean.” Crowley grins, giving him just another little love tap. A proper spanking Aziraphale might not want, but he does love a little smack to whine about, a little nothing just for the sound of it, and for the excuse to demand he be kissed better…

 

    Aziraphale moans around his fingers again, and Crowley kneads at his arse, sucks a vibrant mark at his shoulder.

 

    “Is that _all you_?” Aziraphale asks at last, pulling off of his fingers again.

 

    “Er… yeah?”

 

    “ _Oh, Crowley_ …”

 

    Well that’s an encouraging response.

 

    “You like that?” He asks, saliva-slick hand sliding down between Aziraphale’s body and Crowley’s stolen pillow, kneading at his chest now, teasing a taut nipple. “You like what I can give you, angel?”

 

    “ _Oh, Crowley_!”

 

    “What _only_ I can give you, that right?”

 

    “Tell me-- tell me what it looks like.” He gasps, clenches just so around him.

 

    Crowley isn’t sure how to describe it-- himself, or the sight of himself sinking twice over into Aziraphale’s willing, eager body. The first things that come to mind aren’t really dirty talk-worthy.

 

    Still, he straightens up and grabs a handful of arse-- plush, fantastic-- spreading his cheeks apart to really watch the way they join...

 

    “It’s, erm… it’s hot, _you’re_ hot… taking me like this. It’s not-- it’s not like a human one. Wouldn’t know how to do just two human ones. It’s-- well, you feel it.”

 

    “Oh, yes.” Aziraphale shivers.

 

    “Is it good? You like it? Is-- is it enough?” He asks. Neither is as thick as he normally is… but Aziraphale’s enjoying it, that’s clear. It can’t be _bad_ , even if it could be better. But this is what he’d had, he wouldn’t really know how to do anything else-- no, he doesn’t _want_ to do something else, he doesn’t want to try something unfamiliar only to find himself stuck, only to be unsure how to return to himself. Aziraphale is so comfortable with giving himself different genitals or no genitals, of doing new things, and Crowley doesn’t know that he could experiment so much. But he feels confident in going back and forth between familiar forms, even if one form is more familiar than the other, these last five and a half thousand years.

 

    “You feel wonderful.” Aziraphale promises, sliding a hand up Crowley’s arm, just touching him, staying connected to him. “Crowley, Crowley, do tell me…”

 

    “You’re so _wet_. Er-- and… so am I, actually. They’re…” He hesitates. There is no sexy way to describe it, he’s pretty sure. They’re slick because they were designed to be kept inside him somewhere, the texture of the skin is different, he doesn’t know how to make this hot, he just wanted to give Aziraphale what he wanted… he’d thought it would be best if it was all physical sensation, if Aziraphale didn’t have to think about how far from human he is. “Erm, pink.”

 

    Then again, Aziraphale’s not human, either. Aziraphale, who can chose to have or not have whatever parts he likes, Aziraphale who sometimes forgets to blink and breathe, Aziraphale whose wings smell sweeter than Heaven… His angel, who’s never cringed from what a monster he is.

 

    “Here, give me your hand.” He eases out, and Aziraphale whimpers at the loss of him. Guides his hand down to feel-- and it may not be the nice close heat of being deep inside both holes, but he’s never complained about the touch of one of Aziraphale’s plump, soft hands… “You feel that?”

 

    Aziraphale’s touch is so light, as he explores the new-old shape of him, as he tentatively strokes just one side. Crowley watches his face, watches the twitch of delight at the corner of his lips.

 

    “It’s very different.” He nods, finger circling the blunt tip. “Oh-- _oh_ , Crowley, but I do want you back in me… I _need_ you in me. Oh, _Crowley_ , did you really do this just for me? Just to make me happy?”

 

    Between the two of them, they get him repositioned-- he slides back in easy, feels the way Aziraphale sighs so deeply.

 

    “Why else do I do anything?” He grabs for his hand, licks him clean of their combined fluids. “Mm-- why bother doing anything that isn’t just for you? Hm?”

 

    Aziraphale laughs-- _giggles_ , really, and he can _feel_ it.

 

    “Oh, promise me… promise me…”

 

    “ _Anything_.” He leans over him again and nips once more at his shoulder, at his neck. “Name it. ‘S yours. The Koh-i-Noor. The moon.”

 

    “Do this for me again? _Fill_ me, just like today? While I still have… while it’s like this? You’ll give it to me again?”

 

    “Give it to you any time you want it.” He nods. Like this, or… or both hemipenes stretching one entrance open, impossibly tight, and rubbing right up against each other within that close _embrace_ … and how beautiful it would be to look at Aziraphale stretched open to take him. A lovely sight whether it be a ring of tight muscle or a pair of soft, thick lips… Watching the way their bodies join now, it’s three, four distinct shades of pink, everything flush with desire.

 

    He doesn’t know how to put words to it in a way that’s sexy, but it is, really. The more he looks at them, the more he likes the sight of it. Even if he wouldn’t do this often, well… neither would Aziraphale, but sometimes one likes variety, right?

 

    Aziraphale hooks a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him in for a kiss, and he doesn’t worry about it.

 

    He lets his tongue lengthen, until it’s comfortable, until it naturally longs to unfurl, and he can unfurl it straight into Aziraphale’s mouth, pushing past soft parted lips to wind around his, to writhe and tease and _fill_. To slide deeper, feeling Aziraphale suck and swallow around it…

 

    Oh, now that is nice, almost as if on reflex. Crowley would tease him about that gluttonous _want_ of his, if he didn’t need his tongue to keep fucking Aziraphale’s mouth. He moans so _lustily_ , too, and he clings tighter when Crowley’s tongue flicks against his soft palate, and he draws him deeper, draws all of him deeper…

 

    Crowley breaks the kiss with a groan, and thrills to Aziraphale’s whimper.

 

    “You need me so much…” He grins, nuzzling at him. “Shh, shh, I’m yours. I just… oh, _angel_ … if I could sink my whole self into you I would, and be in you completely. Would you?”

 

    “Crowley…”

 

    “Would you?” He presses, hisses. “Leave your vessel and join me in that most perfect union? Let me fuck you down to your core, down to the very essence of you, with all of me? No impermanent flesh? Only us?”

 

    “ _Crowley_ …”

 

    “I want to coil around your _heart_ , I want to be one, so deep, so full, that they’d never untangle us… Oh, but would you miss this flesh? Would you crave this vessel? As I would yours, I would… no matter the perfection of our union, I would… when you’ve such a lovely vessel to take my pleasure of…”

 

    He would… he’d miss the physicality of it, even as he craves an inhuman intimacy. He would miss the scent of Aziraphale, being able to bury his nose in the crook of his neck as he does now, or in his feathers-- oh, if only his wings were out!-- how he smells warm and soft, smells of dust and sunshine, of paper and leather, of vanilla and sweetened tea, of wood shelves and wool. He would miss the enveloping heat of his body. He would miss soft flesh ripe for the squeezing. He would miss his kisses.

 

    “Aziraphale…” He whispers.

 

    “Crowley…”

 

    “Give me your throat.”

 

    “ _Yes_.”

 

    This time, when he kisses him, there is no preamble. He fucks his way into that flawless mouth, that perfect throat, and feels Aziraphale welcome him. He twists around him as no human lover could, and fucks him, fucks him, everywhere that he can, throws his pillow out of the way to take its place in Aziraphale’s arms, grabs thick handfuls of him and rocks together with him in pursuit of ecstasy.

 

    He lets go when he feels Aziraphale there, withdraws from him slowly only to curl around him, kiss him, pet him and whisper a thousand sweet nothings.

 

    “Do you find me beastly, my love?” He asks at last, his voice a low rumble.

 

    “You old serpent... As often as possible.” Aziraphale sighs, and drags him down to another kiss.


	13. Ambrosia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From prompt meme- 'Crowley eating out Aziraphale's pussy'.

    Aziraphale trembles. 

  
  
    It's highly gratifying, and he hasn't even begun yet.

  
  
    "What's the matter, pet? Nervous?" Crowley grins, and his tongue darts out, not quite touching. More than close enough to funnel the heady scent of desire to him. 

  
  
    "Nervous of you?" Aziraphale chuckles, and reaches out to tousle his hair, affection bleeding out of the gesture. So warm, so sweet... how could Crowley resist such a beguiling creature? "Never, my dear."

  
  
    Crowley has Aziraphale's thick thighs SPREAD, has him laid out and waiting, and the effort he's made...

  
  
    Crowley starts by lipping at the tuft of white-blond curls over his mons, giving them a tug.

  
  
    "Ooh-- that's..." Aziraphale curls up off the pillows with a soft near-giggle. "What are you even doing?"

  
  
    " _Exploring_." Crowley purrs, flicking his tongue out again, this time making contact. 

  
  
    Aziraphale remains up on his elbows to watch as best he can past the curve of his belly, catching Crowley's eyes. The heated look in them. He reacts with a blush, perhaps picking up on a few of Crowley's louder and filthier thoughts in the moment. 

  
  
    For instance- the thought of making Aziraphale scream in ecstasy with the application of tongue and fingers. For instance- the thought of plunging his cock into him after, while he's still dripping with his own arousal and still trembling from the strength of his first five orgasms. For instance- the thought of eating him out again after, lucky number seven, heedless of his own release. Something so filthy Aziraphale would blush and protest and secretly love it so terribly much... he always loves when Crowley is at his filthiest.

  
  
    He presses a soft kiss to the mons, breathes in the scent of him a little more. Something sharp, something musky, something sweet... and something ethereal. Aziraphale...

  
  
    More soft kisses, around the fat and fleshy outer lips. The more kisses he spreads, the pinker and fuller they get, the more juicy and open Aziraphale grows. Crowley drinks in his soft sighs, and feels the jump of a muscle along his inner thigh. He traces his tongue up the seam of him and feels how easily he gives way... how easy it is for his tongue to sink in, to run up and down between all those lovely folds. 

  
  
    Oh, they hold the scent of his need so well... Nothing against a good cock-- and Aziraphale's cock is certainly good-- but this? This shape, it's like it was designed to delight the senses. Some people are visual, some like sound, and some just want a lover's touch, but _Crowley_ , Crowley thrives on _scent_. Nothing could be sexier than the way Aziraphale smells when he needs loving. He smells good enough just when he's going about his day, but arousal on Aziraphale smells more like heaven than Heaven. 

  
  
    It's not just the shape, of course. It's the wetness, the aroma... Aziraphale just doesn't sweat enough, and the skin musk he does have is good, oh it's a drug, but Crowley's got to get right up close to taste it. And his cock is a beauty of a thing, but it takes time to get it leaking fluid, to get that scent of need in the air. 

  
  
    A pussy, though? A soft and lovely pussy? Warm just to hold your hand near, hot under your tongue, and so, so wet? The moment his angel started thinking sexy thoughts he started lubricating himself, and the moment Crowley caught the scent of that, well...

  
  
    "You are absolutely gushing with want, sweetheart." He sighs, and one hand slides up from Aziraphale's thigh to cup over the whole thing, to feel that heat, before he shifts to slip two fingers up inside. "And I just want to drink it like nectar."

  
  
    " _Crowley_!"

  
  
    "Ooh, yes. Ambrosia, that's what you are... I'd drink your pleasure down 'til I was full with it. 'Til you make me sluggish and exhausted from loving you so well..."

  
  
    "Oh, Crowley..." Aziraphale drops back against the pillows, and he lets out a yelp when Crowley massages firm, tight little circles against his g-spot. Aziraphale's never had a g-spot before, Crowley's not sure he'd even realized he'd given himself one as part of the whole thing. 

  
  
    His tongue seeks out Aziraphale's clit as his fingers keep working a while. Well-hidden at first, it's easy enough for a questing demon to find now, now that he's blossoming with arousal. 

  
  
    He's gentle with it, for now. He teases with slow movements, delighting in the way the little nub fits almost perfectly in the fork of his tongue. 

  
  
    Aziraphale's delighting in that little detail, too, going by the sounds he lets out. Crowley doesn't want to push him too far too fast-- much as he LOVES to overdo it, this is all a fresh experience. Has that New Effort Smell and all. Overstimulation is all well and good, but it's got to be the fun kind. 

  
  
    He eases up on Aziraphale's clit, scissoring his fingers to open him up, sliding his tongue on in. Letting it... _wriggle._

  
  
    Crowley moans into him. So hot and slick, so _tasty_... muscles clenching against him, fluttering helplessly in pleasure... And Aziraphale, he buries a hand in Crowley's hair, he massages at his shoulder and up the side of his neck. Holds to him so desperately and so tenderly, his darling Aziraphale, his dove, his own...

  
  
    He reaches out, lets the edges where their auras butt up against each other blur, lets Aziraphale's mind sink into a shared world with his own. Feels a little of his pleasure, just enough to direct him how best to please, what kind of Too Much is too much and what's just right. 

  
  
    He nips at him just a little, where he can take it, all along the outer lips just to make him squeal and groan and clamp down tight around the fingers deep inside him-- not moving, for a moment, only giving him something to stretch around and feel, until Aziraphale can't take it any more and Crowley returns his tongue to its ministrations, moving within him. He nudges around with his nose a little, finding Aziraphale's clit with it and feeling him shiver. They moan in tandem, and Crowley speeds up, can't help it, not when he can feel Aziraphale's need on this level, and it becomes so much more rewarding to satisfy it, becomes almost a need of his own...

  
  
    He keeps going until Aziraphale is crying out, writhing, muscles spasming in delight, gripping at his hair and rolling his hips, grinding up into him and then pushing him gently away, those cries falling to rough panting gasps... 

  
  
    He lays one last kiss to him, to twitching lips, and reluctantly lifts his head. His face is smeared with slick want, from his nose down to his chin, and he waits until Aziraphale meets his eyes, before letting his long tongue lick, slow and languorous, over all of it.

  
  
    " _Delicious_." He proclaims, and watches Aziraphale shiver under his gaze. 

  
  
    "Oh-- _oh_ , Crowley, that was... oh, Crowley." 

  
  
    Crowley grins, wide, and strokes at Aziraphale's trembling thighs. 

  
  
    "Oh, yes." He says. "And I want _more_."

  
  
    " _Oh, Crowley_!"


	14. Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt requesting nantaimori... not that Crowley observes proper etiquette.

    'Let yourself in', Crowley had said. 'Make yourself at home', Crowley had said. 'Your dinner will be on the table, don't wait up for me', Crowley had said.

 

    Well, dinner is certainly on the table, and Aziraphale can see why Crowley couldn't let him in.

 

    "My _my_ , my dear, but you _do_ look a sight..." He says, standing frozen in the doorway. Crowley's flat has a formal dining room which the demon never uses-- he eats on his sofa, when he bothers to eat, or in his kitchen, has a taste of something for the experience but doesn't bother to eat until he's full. He's never _empty_. Aziraphale has never sat at his table before, has never had reason to. Crowley always takes him out, to eat, and they retire to Aziraphale's back room more than to either flat, even now as a couple they have their routine... but he has begun spending more time here. Just... not to _eat_.

 

    The table itself is very modern, a big black slab, polished to a mirror sheen, resting on two dark pedestals. There's a single chair, gold-leafed with red velvet cushions, not so grand as Crowley's personal throne at his desk, but quite grand enough. It's pulled up to the middle of the table, and lying along the table's center is Crowley.

 

   And lying on Crowley... oh, it's enough to make Aziraphale's mouth water.

 

    "All for you, angel." He drawls, and Aziraphale moves to take his seat. A pot of tea and a glass of wine are set out next to Crowley, to either side of where Aziraphale's place setting would be, were Crowley not his plate. He is entirely naked, of course, which would be a welcome sight even without the sushi, but it's coming near enough to see his face that puts the biggest smile on Aziraphale's-- his familiar pleased smirk, the one he gets when he knows he's made Aziraphale happy with something, so self-satisfied... his lovely eyes, gaze adoring.

 

    "I do believe the platter is supposed to be still and silent, my dear." Aziraphale says, without much reproach.

 

    "Ah, yes, but then how could I do this?" Crowley picks up the chopsticks, selecting a roll from his abdomen-- Aziraphale leans in to let Crowley feed it to him, groaning in pleasure. Salmon, masago... a hit of something spicy, something quite spicy, but a cooling cucumber... some manner of specialty. 

 

    "A bit hot... why don't you try me on a bit of something else?"

 

    "Oh, as you wish." Crowley grins, selecting a nice fatty tuna nigiri from along his thigh to feed him next. Drinking in Aziraphale's reaction.

 

    " _Divine_ , my dear." He sighs. He takes the chopsticks from Crowley, and Crowley returns to lying still, though 'silent' may not be on the menu-- Aziraphale needn't have him silent, anyhow. He's fairly certain it's traditional for the serving platter to be the... subservient partner. It stands to reason Crowley would turn it on its head in his desire to feed and spoil Aziraphale. He's so insistent in his caretaking sometimes... not that Aziraphale complains. They're figuring out how to fuss over each other, now that it's allowed. How much is right, what ways. Neither of them has ever been fussed over before...

 

    It's quite the array, too, the sushi... From shoulder to shoulder and down across his chest, and then along the top of each thigh, nigiri. Down his abdomen, from just below the pectorals to his belly, the rolls. On the crest of each hip, inarizushi, perfect and golden. More than one person really ought to consume, and yet Aziraphale has the feeling he's meant to eat it all himself. Crowley had said ' _your_ dinner', not 'dinner'.

 

    He returns to the first row Crowley had started him on, finishing the spicy roll, his lips starting to tingle. When Crowley made the order, had he selected it, or merely asked for the chef's choice? Had he gone in looking for anything with salmon, knowing Aziraphale's weakness? Or had he wanted him to experience the heat? The slight edge of pain, the rush of it, the sensory experience...

 

    He's still going at an eager pace when he moves onto the California roll, a nice antidote to the heat, but all the rice is filling, and while he's capable of making room, it's a process, it's not a _pleasant_ process. It's willfully speeding his already unnatural metabolism to burn away the excess into the ether. He tends not to bother unless he finds himself uncomfortably stuffed-- sometimes you just don't _realize_ , until it's too late, or at least Aziraphale doesn't, because Crowley is forever tempting him into dessert, and then into half of _Crowley's_ dessert, and often only after half of Crowley's _meal_ , and it's always so _good_ , and Crowley is always so _eager_...

 

    There's an eel roll next, though, if he just keeps moving along Crowley's body, and he _likes_ an eel roll... and he likes the way Crowley gazes at him, the heat. If he glances down, will he notice an... _interest_ yet? He's not yet sure he dares. He knows Crowley likes feeding him, he knows what it does to him. But he's never eaten in front of a naked Crowley before. It somehow feels... not intimidating, but it makes him all fluttery inside, and it makes him feel as if he's truly the one on display, as if he's bared to Crowley in a more fundamental and powerful way than mere nudity. It is not his vessel which is naked, but something inside him. Crowley sees his hunger, sees his _pleasure_. An earthly pleasure, pleasure of the flesh... an _un-angelic_ pleasure. 

 

    It _thrills_ him to show Crowley such a thing.

 

    "There's so _much_ , dear..." He tuts, staring down at the last eel roll. And it feels like it's _expanding_ in him. "Will you have any?"

 

    "Oh no, already had mine. And you know I've not got much appetite." Crowley grins. "I'm already _stuffed_."

 

    Aziraphale groans. It won't be nearly as good if he puts it away for tomorrow, the rice will go all hard, the lovely inarizushi won't be the perfect delight it is now, and all his nigiri, so attractively laid out for his pleasure...

 

    "I'll never finish it all..."

 

    "You will." Crowley takes the chopsticks back, and offers him that final eel roll, waving it temptingly before him until he obediently opens up. "Good boy."

 

    "I'm not-- umm!" He chews carefully. His stomach protests before he's halfway to swallowing. "I'm not a trained animal, Crowley."

 

    "You're good, aren't you?"

 

    "I don't need you to tell me if I am." 

 

    "My mistake." He _purrs_. "Shall I not do it anymore?"

 

    "Well... _no_..." Aziraphale shifts in his seat. "I-- You might."

 

    "Oh, I might?" He selects a smoked salmon nigiri and slides it past Aziraphale's lips, making him moan.

 

    This time, Aziraphale checks. There is a definite swelling of interest.

 

    "Good boy." Crowley adds, in a whisper. "More?"

 

    How far could he watch that lovely member grow, just doing this? Slender and pale like its bearer, most of the time-- and long-- but now... already he's plumper than usual, pinker. Twitches a bit against Crowley's thigh, under Aziraphale's gaze. He'll have that in his mouth as well, when all is said and done. He won't be satisfied until he has.

 

    If he can make it that far. If he doesn't eat himself into one of those post-meal sleeps Crowley is so fond of. If he doesn't just need to lie down and ride out the discomfort. He concentrates on making room-- a bit trickier and less pleasant than sobering up-- and nods. "Yes. A little more."

 

    "You'll clean your plate if you want dessert." Crowley leers, offering up the second smoked salmon nigiri. 

 

    "I don't know if I'll be up for dessert after all this, Crowley..."

 

    "Really? Because I saw you eyeing it just now."

 

    Aziraphale's mouth forms a silent 'oh'. "I... shall have to be sure to lick my plate clean, then."

 

    "Please do." Crowley groans. "And angel? No cheating now."

 

    His jaw drops. Crowley takes advantage, pushing another piece of fatty tuna past his lips. He should have made more room while he had the chance. He should...

 

    He could always refuse, of course, at any point he could. But he's already seen the effect he's beginning to have on Crowley, and if he stops now, he won't have the creamy scallop nigiri. He won't have the jewel-like ikura. He won't have the lightly sweet and fluffy tamago. He won't have that lovely inarizushi. He won't have the last of the rolls... and whatever is in them, Crowley's reserved for near the end at least... and most importantly, he won't have _Crowley_. Not if he doesn't play by the rules of the game set out, he knows Crowley is too much a hedonist for a cold shower, but he's perfectly willing to take care of himself while Aziraphale can but look and not touch.

 

    "Crowley, I'm _suffering_." He pouts.

 

    "Beautifully, I might add. Don't pretend you don't want it, you glutton. I saw the way you looked at it all. And it's all for you." 

 

    He does want it, of course he wants it. He loves food, he loves the experience of it. The flavors, the textures, but also the _fullness_. He loves feeling his mouth stuffed almost too full, loves the feeling of an enormous bite sitting on his tongue, pushing out against his cheek, how it is to work between his teeth, to swallow down. And there's a satisfaction in a certain amount of fullness in his stomach after a meal, but this is something new. He'd given himself a stomachache once early on overdoing it, too driven by the pleasure and too unused to a corporeal form, unaware that he could be so full. And then he'd learned to ameliorate the issue with an excusable sort of little miracle, and how to eat just enough to feel pleasantly full but not so much as to be lying on the ground clutching his gut and moaning half the night...

 

    Aziraphale doesn't like pain, as a rule-- although there are exceptions, usually in the form of Crowley's teeth sinking in someplace soft. He doesn't enjoy a stomachache. But he enjoys the whole process of eating a very large meal, there's no point in denying it, and certainly not to Crowley. Crowley had once witnessed him down half a loaf of bread, a stewed apple, five honey-mustard eggs (not a patch on the more modern deviled variety, in Aziraphale's opinion, but he'd been quite taken with them at the time), a good serving of pottage, a squab, an inadvisable amount of eel pie, some fried orange, five meatballs, a bit of cheese, and three puffs of pastry off the croquembouche. And had there been a cherry heart? There had been, he was full to bursting, groaning over it all even with a bit of a miracle, and Crowley had slid the tart over to him, his eyes wide, and...

 

    _Oh_.

 

    "Feed me?" He says, soft. Gives a flutter of the lashes and bows his head just a little. It had been discovery, once, brand new foods, things he'd never dreamed and found delight in, alongside the more familiar. This is all mostly familiar, presentation aside, but...

 

    "What strikes your fancy?"

 

    "The scallop?"

 

    "As you wish. Anything for you." Crowley lifts it carefully. Aziraphale hums his pleasure around it, lets his eyes roll back and flutter closed-- a bit of a come-on, yes, but... well. He can feel a bit of the cream in question at his upper lip, and he waits until he's fully finished chewing and swallowing before delicately licking it clean. Then he allows himself a discreet glance at Crowley's prick, hardening nicely. The little upwards _twitch_. All he has to do is earn it...

 

    "More?" He asks sweetly. He's going to suffer for this, but the way Crowley looks at him, it might just be worth it...

 

    Crowley feeds him one of the ikura nigiri, and he feels the salty burst of it over his tongue, and sighs deep and lusty. Another, and then the last of the creamy scallop... He's too full, the idea of trying to drink anything on top of this fills him with dread, the idea of the rice expanding further over time with tea or water or wine... and the tea and the wine both smell so lovely, but he feels so bloated already... 

 

    "Here." Crowley says, his voice throaty, his pupils wide. He feeds one of the tamago to Aziraphale with his fingers, and Aziraphale grabs his wrist, holds it, sucks at his fingers and watches his prick leap to attention. "Ohh, angel... more?"

 

    Aziraphale nods, but Crowley neither makes a move to feed him, nor surrenders the chopsticks.

 

    "Come and get it." He whispers, indicating the remaining tamago, where it sits over his heart-- or at least, close enough.

 

    To do so, Aziraphale has to stand and bend over the table. It presses uncomfortably into his stomach, and Crowley shushes his strained groan, there are gentle fingers in his hair... He's not sure he can get it down for a moment, with the table pushing against him. Crowley's hand slides to curve around the side of his throat, and he manages, swallows it down and feels every millimeter of its journey. Crowley groans, low, deep in the back of his throat.

 

    "Your inarizushi." He barely gets the words out, husky, dripping with need. 

 

    "Oh, oh, Crowley..."

 

    "All right, love, we'll share. But only if you feed it to me. And no hands." He says. "You eat yours first, though."

 

    The inarizushi is perfection. The crisp skin, the spongy sweetness of the tofu, the contrast to the sushi rice pocketed within... just a little sesame... It isn't just the inarizushi, though, it's Crowley, it's the crisp, clean perfection of licking his skin, and the shape of his hipbone, and the nearness of his hard, waiting prick, and the musk of him... Aziraphale has to lean even further over the table to reach his other hip, but he takes it in his teeth and brings it up to Crowley's lips, Crowley pushing himself up on his elbows, inhumanly flexible spine allowing him to get a bit upright without disturbing the platter of his abdomen. 

 

    Aziraphale sighs as Crowley accepts the carefully-held packet in his own teeth, his own perfect teeth... He collapses back into his chair with a little moan and rubs at his belly, much abused by the table as it is. There's still one roll, sliced neatly into four pieces... 

 

    "Oh, you'll like this..." Crowley croons. He pops one into his mouth, chewing and humming over it, making his own pleasure in it clear. Then he lies back, moves the remaining pieces to rest, one at the center of his chest, one just below his navel, and the final piece he takes in his lips, crooking a finger for Aziraphale to come and get it from him. To eat his way down to his waiting treat... Surely he won't have to lean over the table for that, too?

 

    But there's a playful light in Crowley's eyes he would do far too much for, and so he all but crawls up onto the table for that bite, feeling Crowley's lips under his own.

 

    He makes a sound of surprised delight, rolling it over in his mouth as he chews. Seared tuna, cream cheese... avocado, and... mango? The green onion and coconut shreds he'd seen it topped with. And a ponzu sauce. Very bright, sweet-savory, fatty... Crowley had certainly been right about his liking it. Even after everything, he enjoys it so much it takes his mind from his prior discomfort. Again, Crowley's hand curves gentle around his throat to feel him swallow. He fancies Crowley watches the progress it makes, eyes sliding all the way down his body to the prominent swell of his belly.

 

    "Two more." Crowley's thumb strokes across his lip. "You can do it. You've taken more."

 

    "Not like this."

 

    "Oh, angel..." His pupils widen a fraction more. His tongue darts forward. "Oh, you've no idea what you do to me sometimes..."

 

    "Bit of an idea." Aziraphale's eyes flicker down to the now-prominent erection. Insistent, even. The glistening pearl of wetness newly beaded upon the head... Yes, he'd like to taste _that_...

 

    "Bit of an idea." Crowley chuckles agreeably, threading his fingers back through Aziraphale's hair. "Two more nice big bites and then you can do _anything you like_ to me. Nothing's off the table, my solemn promise on that. We could even do it on the table. It's sturdy enough."

 

    Oh, but Crowley has to know what he wants, what he really wants. He must know. Aziraphale takes the next bite down, moaning in pleasure, in discomfort, in anticipation. And then the next, and it's so _good_ , and it's so _much_... the rice, the full fat of fish and cream cheese and avocado... how can something that tastes so light be so rich and so filling? He licks the spot where it had been clean, feeling the heat of Crowley's erection against the side of his face.

 

    He does take Crowley's suggestion, moving up onto the table himself, kneeling and bending over him. His stomach is still uncomfortably pressed in on just by his own thighs, but those have more give to them than the table had. He swallows Crowley down with a satisfied sigh. Yes. This is what he needs to do, as often as possible. Needs the lovely feeling of having his mouth filled, stretched to fullness, without eating another bite. He guides Crowley's hand back to grace his throat once more and sucks greedily.

 

    "Ohh, love... oh, darling, oh, angel..." Crowley bucks up, struggles to keep control, but Aziraphale welcomes it, he does. He can't think of his own pleasure, his body feels too full, too heavy. As attractive as the idea of another kind of stuffing is, he doesn't want to be jostled so much... "Oh, Aziraphale, tell me you'll swallow every drop..."

 

    Aziraphale's own moan is desperate, a muffled keening thing, but he doesn't pull back for a moment, not when Crowley does gently tug to let him know he's there. He does just that, swallows until there's no more he can take, and he's not sure what he feels, but it's wonderful. Either he's not quite himself, or he's more himself than he's ever been before. He's Crowley's, that's all that matters.

 

    Crowley helps him off the table, to stand beside it, and he follows him, standing so close, still naked and yet once more, Aziraphale feels as though it's somehow the other way around. Crowley is the one recently sated, and yet Aziraphale feels he is that, too, in a realer way. No sexual release could give him what this has given him. And then Crowley grabs at his belly with both hands, kneading firmly, and he cries out.

 

    "Oh-- oh, Crowley, don't!" He gasps, and immediately Crowley is on his knees, hands hovering, not touching.

 

    "Sh-sh-sh-sh..." He presses the gentlest kisses to Aziraphale's swollen stomach. "Oh, angel, I'm sorry... you're all right now, baby, honey, Aziraphale... no, I'll be gentle with you, I will. I promise. Come on... let's go and have a lie down and I'll be gentle with you. I'll carry you, if you like. You were so good, you've been fantastic, just let me be good to you now. Or-- or a hot bath, hot baths are good for indigestion, yeah? Or-- anything."

 

    "A lie down is fine." He pets at Crowley's hair. "You don't have to carry me."

 

    "I could."

 

    "... All right." He smiles, and carefully settles himself into Crowley's arms. The show of trust seems to buoy Crowley back up, after how honestly distraught he'd been to have been too rough.

 

    In the bedroom, Crowley undresses him, gentle, and then he lays him down on his side, with one extra pillow to rest his aching belly against and another to prop between his knees. He spoons up behind him, and this time the hand that rubs at his belly is careful. Cool and light, moving in sweeping circles, Crowley soothes some of the ache. There's a soft sound from behind, like a blanket being shaken out, and then Aziraphale finds himself blanketed, by Crowley's wing. 

 

    "Shame I haven't got a birthday or I'd ask you to do this again for me." He says, kissing the back of Aziraphale's neck.

 

    "As long as it's not too soon, my love, you can ask me. Er... maybe give me a month. I'm beginning to see why you always want to sleep after a big meal."

 

    "You sleep, then. I'll watch out for you while you do. I'll keep right on massaging."

 

    "You know..." Aziraphale sighs. "I do believe you will."


	15. Trouser Snake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I... Don't know what to say about this, except that I could not resist filling this prompt.

    "Don't you want me to do for you?" Aziraphale frowns gently, his brow creasing. He's so sweet, and Crowley wants him so desperately, he does, but...

 

    How does he explain _this_?

 

    "You know I like going down on you." He shrugs. Aziraphale's got a nice penis. A human-looking penis. Thick and rosy and with velvety hot skin... Crowley's been enjoying getting to know it better since they took that step, but...

 

    "Yes, but I've never gotten to see you naked." He pouts, sliding closer, his hand on Crowley's cheek. "I'd like to. I don't... I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful, or that I don't like your attentions, or-- or that I don't enjoy what we do, but we've... But it isn't _fun_ for me if I think I can't please you as you please me. I mean it's _fun_ , but I-- But I feel simply _awful_ when it's over and I've not been good to you! And if it's that you don't enjoy it, then-- then just say so, and we don't have to do it at all, but-- but I've never even seen you non-sexually, and... and I want for you to trust me with that intimacy, and if you don't wish for me to touch you, I won't. And if you don't wish for me to look upon you lustfully, I won't. But I want-- I want to lie together and feel your skin. I want to bathe together, and wash your back, and show you I care... Can't we do that? And if you're not ready, then-- then I would rather any sexual contact between us wait until you do feel so safe with me."

 

    Crowley groans, his head thunking forward softly against Aziraphale's shoulder.

 

    "I do want you, love... I do. And I trust you, I just... This is... _I'm_... a demon."

 

    "I don't see why I can receive a blowjob from a demon and not give one in return."

 

    "Er, well... logistically, you-- you can't. Or, not the way I can for you. My body, it's... _weird_." He shrinks in on himself. "It's not-- it's not _human_."

 

    " _I'm_ not human." Aziraphale laughs. It sounds light and relieved. "Crowley, is that all? You-- You do like sex?"

 

    "With you. Theoretically. You turn me on like anything, it's just... I don't want to scare you."

 

    "You won't." He promises. "Show me?"

 

    It starts well enough. Crowley removes his shirt, and while at a glance his upper body looks normal, the musculature is all wrong for a human. The structure of his abdominals is...

 

    "May I touch?" Aziraphale asks, breathless, and at Crowley's nod, his soft fingertips travel over the ridges of firm muscle. "Oh, you're _lovely_."

 

    "It just gets weirder from here." Crowley says, snapping his fingers to vanish his socks. The soles of his feet are scaled, and Aziraphale smiles and bites his lip, and reaches his own sock-clad foot out to run a toe along Crowley's sole.

 

    "All right. So show me what's so _weird_."

 

    Crowley braces himself. He squeezes his eyes shut. He shows Aziraphale.

 

    He expects to hear some disgust, perhaps a hasty retreat, a request he put it _away_ , thank you, but instead Aziraphale… coos to it.

 

    “Oh, Crowley, he’s _adorable_!”

 

    “ _It’s_ adorable, angel, _it’s_ just a part of me, not a living thing—And ‘adorable’ isn’t what a man likes to hear, you know!” Crowley scowls.

 

    “It isn’t? You could call mine adorable, I think that would be nice.” Aziraphale blinks at him.

 

    “Oh. I could?”

 

    “Yes. I’d like that.”

 

    “Yours is. I mean… when it’s—when it’s soft? I think that’s… cute.” He ventures. He doesn’t think it’s the right word when it’s hard, when it’s hard he thinks it’s sexy. Even when it’s soft he wants his mouth on it immediately and fully. But he supposes it is cute. They’re usually sort of ugly, silly-looking things, he thinks, but not Aziraphale’s. He thinks Aziraphale’s is—he feels things about it he doesn’t feel about anyone else’s, at least. And when he’s naked and he’s soft, Crowley does feel… protective. Which as good as means Aziraphale is adorable, every last inch.

 

    Aziraphale hesitates, reaching for him, and Crowley nods. G—Sa— _Somebody_ , but he hasn’t been touched, ever, how could he ask to be, with this? He’s touched himself, but it always feels so unsatisfying, so meaningless. And now, Aziraphale, asking to be permitted!

 

    Aziraphale runs those soft fingertips along him, from the top of the little snake’s head down its spine, to where it… well, attaches, a spread of iridescent dark scales in the place where anyone else might have a bit of hair. He seems delighted when it reacts to him, lets out a soft gasp as it wraps around his wrist, and Crowley groans.

 

    “Oh! He’s very affectionate, isn’t he?”

 

    “It. _Fffuck_ , I—I just—No one’s ever…”

 

    “Then it’s about time someone _should_.” Aziraphale murmurs, and he moves to kneel beside the sofa. “I may not be able to do quite what you’ve done for me, but… oh, that tickles!”

 

    Crowley’s snake has darted its tongue out to lick at Aziraphale’s hand, twisted around nosing at the soft flesh of his palm. Soft and warm, his hand feels so good, Crowley can’t help himself, twisting around him, squeezing gently, tugging him close…

 

    Aziraphale urges him to unwrap himself, and while that portion of his anatomy has a bit of a mind of its own sometimes, it is still a part of him, he can tame it somewhat. It periscopes up in search of further attention, though, and Aziraphale laughs, one of those pure joy laughs, Crowley can’t even feel self-conscious about that laugh.

 

    “So _handsome_.” He coos, stroking down its blue-black sides. Crowley has to grip the arm of the sofa hard, the cushion. “ _Oh, yes_ … such a lovely creature you are.”

 

    The snake is a pretty respectable size, if Crowley says so himself. Twelve inches, more than he’d reasonably try to insert into someone if he thought insertion would be comfortable. He really doesn’t. Luckily it’s flexible, he can usually… coil it up into a reasonable amount of space. Hope no one looks too close. It doesn’t mind the tight confines of his trousers, but he’s just not sure how he feels about putting it inside someone. Although… perhaps just getting to writhe against the nice, warm, soft flesh, to slither between Aziraphale’s thighs…

 

    What he really wants to do is wrap himself around Aziraphale’s cock, feel it hard in his coils, work him with them and revel in the slick heat… Would he taste it, if it licked Aziraphale’s? He tries to focus, as its tongue flicks out across Aziraphale’s hand again, but his hand carries so little to scent…

 

    And then— _mercy_! And then Aziraphale bends his head forward and kisses the end of the snake’s nose. Crowley _mewls_. Crowley _yelps_. Aziraphale doesn’t stop with a single soft kiss, but lets his full, wet lips travel everywhere, so gentle and so thorough. And when it darts and twists and catches his lower lip in its mouth, Aziraphale chuckles, and his tongue swipes over its snout.

 

    “Aziraphale!”

 

    “Oh, you like that?” He grins, only slightly hampered by the dick-snake attempting to kiss him back, and Crowley’s lost all control of it at this point, but it clearly isn’t biting very hard. Doesn’t have fangs, anyway, so that’s a relief…

 

    “Aziraphale, I… oh… oh, angel.”

 

    He strokes the snake’s belly, root to throat, and Crowley throws his head back. It releases Aziraphale’s lip and he goes right back to kissing, petting, lavishing attention upon it, and giggling when the thing starts thrashing around desperately in search of that little bit more.

 

    “Oh, oh, _eager_ …” Aziraphale purrs, and lets it wrap around his wrist again. His other hand strokes over the coils, his lips never cease their focus on the head…

 

    He never imagined this kind of acceptance… maybe he should have. Aziraphale knew him when he was a snake himself. And ever since they started… ‘dating’ seems a silly word for it all things considered, but ever since they started being _this_ together, Aziraphale… he reaches up, infinitely tender, and pulls Crowley’s glasses away at the first sign of permission, and tells him he has the most beautiful eyes, touches him, tentative, and asks if Crowley will leave a mark low on his throat or high on his thigh, something with _teeth_ , and…

 

    And Aziraphale knows that he’s a demon. He’s never cared, except to fear others trying to come between them. He’s never feared him, never thought him loathsome or foul. Oh, he’s used the _words_ before, yes. He says _loathsome_ like he’s begging to be fucked. He says _foul_ with stars in his eyes.

 

    The snake throws its head back as Crowley moans, and Aziraphale licks its throat, and the world bursts with light…

 

    “Er, bless y—No, _not_ that, sorry, but—erm…” Aziraphale’s brow furrows slightly, as the snake uncoils from around his wrist and promptly falls asleep on Crowley’s thigh. “Oh! Was that…?”

 

    “Yeah.” Crowley blushes.

 

    “Oh, how _darling_ , he _sneezes_!” He beams, and restrains himself from touching any more, though it’s clear he’d like to.

 

    “C’mere…” Crowley pats the sofa. “I… I’ll get you in a mo’… I think I need to recover from that.”

 

    “Oh?” He beams even more brightly, and settles himself at Crowley’s side.

 

    “It’s not like that with my own hand.”

 

    “Well, we should do it again sometime.” Aziraphale says, and his hand settles over Crowley’s thudding heart, and his cheek settles against the point of Crowley’s shoulder. “Oh… _darling_ thing.”

 

    “It’s not—“

 

    “I meant _you_.”

 

    “Ah.” Crowley smiles, his arm coming up around Aziraphale’s shoulders. “Well that’s all right, then.”


	16. Serpentine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the kink meme, and for the snakefuckers, by request. Specifically, a request for established relationship A/C, and Aziraphale responding to Crowley in his lap the same way he always does, even when he's snakey.  
> If you prefer to avoid sexy goings-on with Crowley in snake form, this is your warning to skip this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, final warning, he will be a snake and they will do the do.

It's not that he doesn't _know_ what Crowley wants, of course. Crowley wants to sit with him because he's warm, and it's cold out, and he's wearing Crowley's favorite jumper, the thick, soft cream one with the roll neck, the one he can't stop touching every time Aziraphale wears it.

 

It's just that normally, Crowley slinks into Aziraphale's lap in his favorite shape, and jams his hands under Aziraphale's arms, or inside an outer layer of clothing, and demands to be heated up with a bit of a pout, and... well, and sometimes Aziraphale grabs a blanket, and sometimes they find other ways of _heating up_.

 

This time, an enormous black serpent slides up his leg, drapes across his thighs in a ovoid coils, and then slithers his way up under Aziraphale's jumper, scales cool and smooth against his skin, shocking a little gasp from him.

 

"Ssso _warm_ , angel..." Crowley hisses, in blissful tones, his tongue tickling at Aziraphale's chest.

 

"Er-- well-- thank you?"

 

Crowley wriggles against him, getting cozy. His nose comes up towards the neck of the jumper-- his tongue flicks out through the slight gap and catches Aziraphale's chin, though he doesn't stretch the jumper out too far trying to pop his head out.

 

"And _ssso sssoft_... Mm, love, _would_ you?"

 

Aziraphale strokes at the exposed coils out on his lap, no thick wool to protect them.

 

"You feel so smooth." He says. The light from his reading lamp catches the slight sheen of iridescence, when Crowley twists a bit in his lap, trying to work more of himself up under the jumper. Aziraphale leans forward so that Crowley can coil around him, can get more of himself warmed that way. "Almost... _buttery_."

 

He feels the chuckle vibrate through the chest and throat wrapped around him. It's hard to tell, in this shape, where throat and chest meet, precisely, though he's given to understand it is mostly chest, can feel out where his heartbeat is, and the odd skinny length of his lungs, when he breathes deep.

 

" _Buttery_. You make me sssound like an _indulgence_."

 

"I like indulging in you." He smiles. The end of Crowley's tail winds around his wrist, slides back up into his sleeve just a bit. "You feel very nice, once the chill wears off."

 

Soft to the touch, but... he's all muscle like this, and Aziraphale can feel in new ways just how strong and how firm he is. And his voice, well... his voice might have a little more hiss in it just now, but it's still just _his_ voice-- velvety and dark with promise, the voice of temptation itself. And the weight of him in Aziraphale's lap, and the occasional teasing touch of his tongue, Aziraphale...

 

 _Responds_.

 

A bit.

 

Crowley's nose pops up again. Down in Aziraphale's lap, part of the length of him squeezes at the surprise effort. "This what I think it is?"

 

"I expect so."

 

"Right. Just checking. Er... did you want me to change back?"

 

 _Yes_ , obviously. He should say yes. They could go to bed and do... _things_ , whatever things they liked, under the covers where it's warm, or with his wings wrapped about Crowley the whole time just to keep _him_ warm, but the answer is most certainly yes.

 

"No."

 

"You... want me... to not change back?"

 

It's embarrassing-- snakes are, he is aware, not generally an object of lust. Not unless you've got something a bit the matter with you. But this isn't 'a snake', is it? It's his _husband_. His husband's smooth skin sliding across Aziraphale's body, his husband's firm muscle holding him just so, his husband's voice oozing in his ear like pure sex... His husband kneading at the growing bulge in his trousers, even if he's doing it with a bit of his abdomen rather than his hand, this time.

 

"I think... I'd like that. For you not to, today."

 

"Mm. Carry me up to the shower."

 

"Oh, very well, you beast, but you're going to have to stop doing _that_." He moves Crowley from his lap, urging him to wrap more firmly about his hips instead, keeping a hand under his lowermost coil, and then his other arm around where Crowley is a visible bulge in the jumper.

 

In the bath, Crowley shifts around Aziraphale as he undresses, coils gliding around him as he keeps himself securely positioned. He clings a little tighter as Aziraphale gets the water started in their big luxury shower, but soon it's hot, and the space fills with steam, and the two of them position themselves comfortably on the big wide stone bench, long enough for Aziraphale to lounge on with Crowley atop him, long and slender and heavy.

 

He glistens, black and wet and incredibly beautiful, basks in the pleasure of the hot water on his scales, and Aziraphale warm and soft-- and not-so-very-soft-- beneath him... Aziraphale strokes down his back, smiling warmly.

 

"Even like thisss?" Crowley asks, nuzzling at his arm, squirming between his thighs.

 

"My dear, of course. The very first time... the very first time we really spoke, you looked just like this, and I... I found you curiously compelling. Beautiful, even."

 

"Do you, er... want to sssee it?" He jerks his head down.

 

"Oh, please."

 

"Here, you-- you've got to get your hand down here, base of the tail."

 

"Dearest, I have no idea where your torso ends and your tail begins." Aziraphale admits.

 

"Here, I'll line up with you." Crowley wriggles against him-- deliciously-- and licks at his neck to drink the scent of him in, sighs against him. Rubs against Aziraphale just so and then rolls to the side a bit to let Aziraphale touch him. "Just stroke around, right there, you'll... you'll be able to feel it. Ohh, any-- any moment now, just... just warm me up a little, honey..."

 

He finds the right spot-- it doesn't take much stroking before he suddenly has Crowley...

 

 _Oh_. Well!

 

There are two of them, they pop right out with a bit of coaxing, and the sound Crowley makes when they do... Aziraphale handles them, probes gently at the opening they emerge from just to see the way Crowley shudders and wiggles and sighs... Very unlike his usual effort, _thick_ at the base, tapered to a blunt tip...

 

"Not too weird, is it?"

 

"Do you remember me our first time?" Aziraphale smiles gently. "I don't think you can get too weird for me."

 

"Pleased to see you've actually got something for me to work with this time." Crowley purrs, twisting back around now and lining himself up, to slide his hemipenes along Aziraphale's cock, frotting against him with Aziraphale trapped between his two.

 

It feels incredible and strange, and Crowley gently closes his jaws around Aziraphale's neck-- no piercing fangs, no biting down, just... holding him, tongue laving along seeking out the pulse point, teasing... Crowley's body moves against him so beautifully, massaging at his belly, his chest, tail rubbing at his thigh, between them. And he cups one hand around Crowley's sleek head, and lets his fingers slide up and down as much of Crowley's six feet of spine as he can reach, positioned as they are, lying beneath the writhing heap of him.

 

He tilts his head back and Crowley angles with him, from the side of his neck to his throat. Aziraphale sees stars.

 

Crowley nips gently at his chin and jaw, and licks at him, as he comes down, writhes against him a little more and then rolls to lie at his side instead, and to let the shower wash away their release as they laze in its gentle spray. Like a summer rain in some tropical paradise...

 

Not like the rain they'd felt in Paradise, but rains they have seen since, certainly.

 

The shower, home to a few small tropical plants in little pots, which like the humidity and all the wet, is not quite that, but it is close enough for Aziraphale. He cranes his neck to kiss Crowley's snout, petting at him, and he watches with idle interest as Crowley softens and sort of tucks back into himself, that segment of his underside facing upwards for a rinse.

 

"Next time, I suppose I shall have to... suit my effort to yours. That is, if you'd like." He coughs. He's sure he could, after all.

 

Crowley, close to dozing in the crook of his arm, perks up.

 

"Next time?"


	17. Flagellation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the OTD prompt meme prompt:  
> Occasionally, when Aziraphale was unable to thwart one of Crowley’s wiles Heaven would call him in to report for punishment. Aziraphale never told Crowley, assuming something similar (or much worse) happened to him when he was unable to thwart a miracle.
> 
> Somehow Crowley finds out.
> 
> Would love it if some of the punishments are for things Crowley didn’t do but just took credit for.
> 
>  
> 
> (I went book 'verse as it wasn't specified)

    Crowley's gasp startles him, and Aziraphale's wings flutter.

 

    "Dear? Is something the matter?"

 

    "Angel..." And rather than going for his wings-- that had been the point, his wings, they were going to groom each other, were disrobed before each other for the first time to do so-- Crowley kisses his back, over the scars there. "Who hurt you?"

 

    There's a dangerous note lurking under his voice, demonic, but his touch and his kisses are so gentle. A sweet warmth spreads through Aziraphale, meeting the uncomfortable chill the question causes, and leading to a storm building in the pit of his stomach. That question comes with a promise, to exact revenge. And Crowley _can't_...

 

    "It's not important."

 

    "No one who whips an _angel_ goes to Heaven when he dies." Crowley's face nuzzles in against him. "It doesn't matter if they're dead. I can go down and find them. I can make sure--"

 

    "No-- no, Crowley, this is my... punishment."

 

    "Punishment?"

 

    "You know. My _punishment_. From--" He can't finish the sentence, but Crowley must see the way his head tilts ceiling-ward. He can feel him shudder against his back.

 

    "What could you ever have done to deserve this? You're so good, angel... How could they do this to you?"

 

    "For my failures. Losing the sword. Things like that." For not doing enough, for never doing enough, but Heaven doesn't need to know that he's placed his loyalty to Crowley over his loyalty to them-- not, as they might suspect if they do remember, when he chose Earth with him at the end of the world, but when he pledged it to him in 1020... He's struggled with his dual loyalties ever since, but he's been...

 

    He's been willing to take the punishment. If he wasn't willing to take the punishment, he wouldn't commit the sin.

 

    Crime.

 

    Whatever it is he does, which is more than a mere failing. But he can't tell Crowley. Crowley... Crowley would insist he not. And maybe now it doesn't matter, maybe they have been cut loose. At least they have not heard from their sides since the whole mess was forgotten. It needn't happen again, if so.

 

    "Doesn't Hell punish you?" He asks, when Crowley says nothing. "I mean-- do they ever-- if they think you've not done a good enough job?"

 

    "If Hell left scars every time they wanted to punish someone, there'd be nothing else left." Crowley snorts. "But it's more of an 'if we feel like it' thing down there, got nothing to do with performance review-- not unless you really mess up, lose the boss' spawn, and avert the coming end times, but they seem to have forgotten I did that. I just try not to be around and I don't have to be the guy who gets... punished."

 

    "If I didn't scar, I expect, they think I might not remember. For next time."

 

    "This wasn't all over the sword, was it? No-- no, these..." His fingertips skate over Aziraphale's skin, and then he folds himself over him, brow to nape, wings coming around them both, and for a moment Aziraphale sees himself as Crowley had seen him, sees the clear difference in age between the scars. It flickers out as soon as it appears, this mental overlay.

 

    "Over any failing. Crowley, it's not important."

 

    "It's important to me. Angel... _Aziraphale_. What could you possibly have done to deserve all this?"

 

    Aziraphale strokes along the edge of one wing, where it holds him safe. So sleek and pretty... it's a relief to think Crowley hasn't been punished every time Aziraphale has claimed the imaginary victory, but not much relief to think at any time Hell might decide to punish him anyway... but suppose he never goes back? Suppose they're truly forgotten now, free?

 

    Passionless angels had droned on about his failings, had whipped him, had recounted his inability to wipe his enemy from the face of the earth in dull monotone as he'd felt his skin break, as he'd clenched his fists until his well-kept nails bit into the palms of his hands, as he'd felt tears roll down his face and fought not to cry out, lest he cry out... lest he cry out for Crowley. And every time, it had been the thought of Crowley which had comforted him, as he was pilloried and punished. The thought that this time, Crowley would be spared the same, for surely whatever they did to him in Hell was worse, and yet he took just as many turns.

 

    He does not feel bitter to think that he had suffered more than his share in the end. Maybe he should, but the thought of Crowley safe had comforted him even if Crowley had never faced the same danger. And after all, Crowley risked torment for no reason every time he set foot in Hell. It was a place where a duke or marquis might grab punish you for someone else's misdeed, and where even if you only ever interacted with the same workaday demons who would never think of doing such a thing, you were removed from the Light...

 

    "I am beginning to believe I never did anything to deserve this, actually." He says, and presses a soft kiss to Crowley's feathers. "It was for love I bore them."

 

    "Heaven doesn't deserve your love."

 

    "Not for the love of them, dear." He can't help a slight laugh.

 

    "Ah." Crowley pulls back to begin grooming his wings, long fingers burying themselves in Aziraphale's coverts. "Right. No, of course. If they thought you giving your sword away was wrong, there must have been loads of times they caught you being too merciful with people... there must have been so many times..."

 

    "Yes. Merciful with-- with people." He tries very hard to smile. It ought to be easy-- hadn't he laughed only a moment ago? And doesn't he feel wonderful with Crowley's hands in his wings?

 

    "If they ever think they can punish you again, they'll have me to answer to." Crowley scoots down to kiss his back again. "I won't let them hurt you. I-- Aziraphale... you love me."

 

    "Yes." He whispers, and reaches back to find Crowley's knee. "Yes."

 

    "If I asked you to do anything... if I asked you to do anything for love of me, is there anything you wouldn't do?"

 

    "There certainly is not much, though I reserve the right to refuse you something foolish."

 

    "Never let them take you. Never let them touch you." He says, and the words come out in a desperate hiss. "Never suffer another moment, and certainly never do it for love, if-- if you mean me."

 

    "Crowley..."

 

    The cheek that presses itself to his scarred back, between his wings, is wet. Aziraphale squeezes the knee beneath his hand.

 

    "I was your failure, wasn't I?"

 

    "My weakness, perhaps." He smiles sadly. "We-- we can protect each other now. We're together."

 

    "I wish I could heal you..."

 

    "Touch me, I am healed." Aziraphale sighs. "The marks may remain, but I don't feel them. I feel you... It's all right now."

 

    "It's not." Crowley smooths over his feathers, gentle, hands shaking now.

 

    "Come here... come here in my lap, love." He urges, and Crowley complies, straddles his lap and wraps his arms around him to reach his wings, to be able to stroke and straighten without seeing the scars, and while Aziraphale is able to do the same for him. "Better?"

 

    "I still know."

 

    "Yes. But it is just a part of me now, it's old hurt. Darling... they hurt you once, too. And it changed you. But those changes... some of them just _are_. And the marks of your old pain... they're you. And I love you. I love your eyes, and the way you hiss, and your tongue. And how you move. All those things you weren't before... the things that hurt when they were fresh are now just a part of you."

 

    "It's different."

 

    "If it is different, they hurt you worse than they did me. You'll get used to it." He promises, getting up into Crowley's axillaries.

 

    "Ohh, that's nice-- All right, if you're sure... if you're sure. But I won't let them touch you again."

 

    "I know you won't. We'll keep each other safe." Aziraphale says, and he kisses him, soft and gentle.

 

    There's nothing Crowley can do about what's past... but the fact that he's here is all that matters to Aziraphale now.


	18. Third Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not really for a request, even, just a blog post about Gabriel inviting himself to come along on one of Crowley and Aziraphale's dates, watching intently as Aziraphale eats because he wants to understand WHY he does it, and then seeing that Crowley is ALSO staring intently at Aziraphale while he eats, assuming it's for the same reason, and attempting to BOND with him over it, all while Crowley freaks out about Gabriel having a Thing for his angel.
> 
>  
> 
> I'd been trying to keep this collection to the book 'verse, but this is SO short that I really can't justify posting it as its own thing so it's going here.

    “Aziraphale, we really need to talk about why your bosssss keeps inviting himself on our dates.” Crowley hisses, drawing Aziraphale into the corner of the back room, darting wary glances back to where Gabriel wanders around the shop, gaze sliding over the spines of the books like water off… off of… well, Crowley’d had the metaphor before, but he’s lost it again now.

 

    “Oh.” Aziraphale nods, glancing over to Gabriel as well, with an awkward little frown. “I see. He’s… chaperoning us. No, it’s all right, he’ll get bored with it and decide you’re all right once he sees that you and I going out really serves to keep you out of trouble and well under celestial observation, I’ll…” He shudders. “Talk to him, if it’s unavoidable.”

 

    “Oh, he is not playing ‘chaperone’, angel, he wants in your pants.” Crowley says, with the sort of snarl most people would find unsettling, which Gabriel might find anything from off-putting to amusing, for all Aziraphale knows. Which Aziraphale finds rather more endearing than he thinks he ought, but there you have it.

 

    “I’m very sure he doesn’t. He’s very proud of the unsullied nature of his vessel. And I’m _not_ currently his favorite angel, though I admit he’s trying.”

 

    “He’s _trying_ , all right.”

 

    “And he’s in a relationship!”

 

    “Aziraphale, I know what happened. He was… watching you.” Crowley’s jaw works a moment. He swallows. “The way _I_ watch you. When I watch you eat.”

 

    “Dear, you must be mistaken. He finds food disgusting.”

 

    “Lots of people get off to things they think are disgusting– most of them do. He was watching you. And when you got up to go miracle the sauce off your shirt in the loo so no one would catch you doing it, he turns and he grins at me and says he’s onto me, ‘cause he caught me watching you. He asked if I watch you eat often, he– he nodded. He wanted me to give him a high five!”

 

    “Ugh, he’s the worst, isn’t he? So… enthusiastic about… all those things.”

 

    “I’m not bothered by the general enthusiasm, I’m bothered by the fact that my boyfriend’s boss is trying to horn in on my–” His voice starts to rise and he hushes himself. “It’s not right, is it? ‘I know what you’re doing’, he says. ‘So do you guys do this often’, he says. And then! Then he asks me what we’re doing next, and when I say we’re just going home, having a glass of wine, and going to bed, he has the audacity to ask me if he can come and watch us!”

 

    “Watch us have a glass of wine?” Aziraphale asks weakly, but the hope in his eyes is dying.

 

    “In bed!” Crowley is on the verge of jumping up and down, of tearing at his hair. “He said ‘oh, bed! Do you mind if I watch?’, I am telling you the unvarnished truth!”

 

\---/-/---

 

    “Gabriel.” Aziraphale’s hands twist together nervously. Always so nervous, Aziraphale… Gabriel doesn’t know why. He’s basically indestructible now, and everyone is ready to be friends again, so there’s nothing for him to be nervous about. He did _not_ seem nervous, when he was consuming matter… maybe it helps him relax. If so, Gabriel guesses he’s all for it. The guy needs _something_.

 

    “Aziraphale! How can I be of service?”

 

    “I’m afraid I really must ask you to leave. Tonight was– If you would like to– Another time, we might go… see a film. Somewhere without food! But you can’t stay and watch what Crowley and I do in bed together! I’m sorry, but I just– I simply can’t allow it!”

 

    Huh. Is that all? Oh, of course he’s disappointed, he’d wanted to understand why a being with no need for sleep would wish to engage in such a slothful activity, and maybe for the demon it’s because they like sloth, but surely Aziraphale had some other reason, and if it was a good reason, then it would be worth knowing about so he could bring it up with the other angels as a potential benefit to the eternal fight against evil. Maybe in short bursts? He’s heard of power naps and he doesn’t know what those are, but they sound very productive somehow.

 

    “No problem, buddy.” He smiles and pats Aziraphale’s shoulder in the warm and friendly way a good manager should always engage with his team. Hm… maybe he could ask the team to run some experiments with sleep… “I’ll just ask Michael and Uriel if they want to do it. And like… Sandalphon and I can watch them, or if they’d rather watch us I’m cool with that, sometimes you gotta take one for the team, right? Anyway, I’ll go figure that out. Thank you for a lovely evening.”

 

    They’d have to do it again sometime… and he’s really glad Aziraphale wound up not falling after all, because he really is a thoughtful guy, suggesting a movie next time just because he knows Gabriel doesn’t eat and therefore can only derive partial enjoyment from going to dinner. Really swell having him back on the team again.


	19. TV Night

    Aziraphale hadn't wanted to watch TV at first. Ever. He'd been singularly unimpressed by Netflix, outside of some of the documentaries. Crowley had been trying in vain to get him to watch something with a plot, and was on the verge of giving up when Aziraphale had actually found something.

 

    "I really like the stories it's based on!" He'd exclaimed, happily settling in with the popcorn and cocoa and a duvet spread across their laps, decadently cozy. "Now there's an author who knew what was going on."

 

    And Crowley had just wanted to enjoy TV Night, so he'd been ready to watch anything his angel liked.

 

    Well... Aziraphale is his own angel. But he's Crowley's best friend, Crowley's constant companion since the end times became just... times. They haven't been out of each other's sight much since.

 

    They haven't talked about that, yet. But when it's TV Night, there's a tacit agreement that one or the other of them might cuddle down against the other's shoulder. That Crowley might snag a few pieces of Aziraphale's popcorn, leach off his heat... that Aziraphale might beg his indulgence in return, in any little way he pleases. That they might sometimes find their hands stealing into a tight clasp.

 

    They make it through three seasons in what feels like no time at all. In just a few TV Nights, they make it into a fourth.

 

    "Is it weird that I want them to kiss?" Crowley asks, reaching into the popcorn bowl to find unpopped kernels lying at the bottom of an otherwise empty bowl. He scoops them up and cups them between his hands and they pop.

 

    "It's very weird." Aziraphale frowns, and steals one of the now-popped kernels back. Makes a satisfied little noise around it that makes Crowley think he'll be hand-popping all their popcorn from now on. He can't find it in him to be upset. "Why would they kiss?"

 

    "I don't know, look at them." He gestures at the screen.

 

    "That man is a Catholic priest!"

 

    "I know, that's what makes it so good. What could be a more satisfying win for a charming rogue with a... weird relationship with religion? What could be sexier than tempting a devoted servant of... you know...." He nods upward. "Into pleasures of the flesh?"

 

    "You are being ridiculous." Aziraphale huffs. He leans forward to pluck his cocoa cup from the coffee table, only to find it empty.

 

    "Could open a bottle of wine." Crowley suggests, and Aziraphale nods, somewhat mollified. "I'm just saying they have chemistry. That scene? The face he made? Forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin all ov--"

 

    " _Yes_ , thank you, that's enough of that. That was more an irritated expression I thought."

 

    "Yeah, but it was... you know, it was the kind of irritated where you'd be up for it."

 

    "Anyway, there's something of a disparity in the... attractiveness levels between the two."

 

    "True." Crowley shrugs. "But there's nothing _un_ attractive about him. I mean the beard's a bit bad, but you know... it's fine if he's less handsome, so long as they've got chemistry."

 

    For a long moment, Aziraphale does not say anything. Crowley has somewhat lost the plot, onscreen, and he's beginning to think he might have done in real life as well.

 

    "What?" He asks, irritable.

 

    "I'm sorry, did you just suggest to me... that more classically-handsome dashing thief... is the less attractive party?" He goggles at him. "That when compared to a somewhat rounded older gentleman, he is less desirable?"

 

    Crowley had not considered his position a controversial one-- not with Aziraphale. It wasn't about those things, after all, was it? It was about that little smile that pretended to be simple, and the steely determination to be Good in the face of week after week of human Evil, and the repeated extensions of good faith, even to those who professed to be beyond helping. It was about exuding that air of love and light. Why wouldn't Aziraphale see that as attractive? Especially measured up against some... would-be byronic villain, moaning about the irredeemability of his soul and then doing whatever the hell he wants?

 

    "Well I don't know." Crowley scowls and fixes his gaze on the television. "I'm not accustomed to thinking of humans as attractive."

 

    "No, certainly not. I mean, nor I. But I think it's plain in an objective sort of a way."

 

    "If you say so. I'm not following this missing jewel thing at all."

 

    "Oh, I know exactly what happened to _that_." Aziraphale beams and wiggles down into his seat. "You'll love it, hush now and watch."


	20. (Y)ours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the OTD prompt: Crowley and Aziraphale sleep together at some point in history, but afterwards things are awkward and they don't speak for some time. Aziraphale wound up pregnant and had their child. Maybe he keeps it a secret from heaven or they're convinced it's someone else's or that he reproduced asexually. Fast forward to the future and Crowley is confused and troubled by the presence of a young angel who hangs around Aziraphale. Aziraphale is nervous, having figured Crowley wouldn't want to know about the child because of the nature of their break up. I don't mind the nature of the pregnancy - it can be a bit cracky with the kid sort of turning up already adult, or it can be closer to what humans experience.
> 
>  
> 
> I've gone in a direction I hope the prompter likes, and went with the TV 'verse, unlike most of the snippets in this collection.

    It had been beautiful, being made love to... it started not long after Paris. Crowley had shown up at the new bookshop, and something was just different between them. There was a gleam in his eye, he lavished such attention on Aziraphale, they'd gotten tipsy in the back and Crowley had fed him chocolates as they reminisced about their long association, and when they had sobered up at the end of the night, it was to find they were holding hands. Their eyes had met-- Crowley had at some point lost his dark glasses-- and then they were kissing, and it was everything he'd ever dreamed.

 

    They'd tried all sorts of things. The things humans did, yes, but also things humans couldn't do. Changed the shapes of their bodies or abandoned them completely, merged into one glorious self with no lines between where he ended and Crowley began, they'd done it all and they'd been so blissfully happy in those moments. Times when they weren't a demon and an angel, when they could steal a little time to be only themselves, together...

 

    He'd been foolish, of course. He hadn't thought about consequences. He'd given himself a different downstairs arrangement and he hadn't thought about it at all, he'd just created it to be the way some humans had, he'd...

 

    He'd been fertile.

 

    It was the next day that he'd realized. If he had changed back, or simply erased it all from being and not replaced it with anything, it might not have taken, but he had wanted the memory of Crowley's touch, of how it had been to feel him deep inside, how they'd laid in Aziraphale's bed a while after just touching each other, just looking at each other. And then Crowley had kissed him, that soft kiss so full of regret that they always shared before parting. They didn't dare spend the night together, they didn't dare speak the words, it was so dangerous to be together and they both knew it, but how could they resist each other?

 

    An angelic pregnancy was bound to be different from a human one-- the conception certainly was, no matter how standard the physical action that had led to it. The way he'd felt something _else_ come into existence inside him in that moment, where a human pregnancy wouldn't be anything like a child for ages.

 

    _Dangerous_. What would they do about it? He hadn't known then, but Crowley had sent word to him, asking him to meet at their usual spot in St. James, and... and _Crowley_ would know. _Somehow_ Crowley would... even if he didn't know what to do, between the two of them they could think of something. And Crowley would keep them safe. Somehow... somehow.

 

    Of course it hadn't happened like that. Aziraphale had thought that after some talk in the park they could repair to his shop where he could tell Crowley everything, he could hardly say 'I'm pregnant' out in the open, but before he could say anything about going back to his, Crowley had asked... that. And then-- plenty of other people to fraternize with, he'd said! As if that was all they were... as if Aziraphale's love was something easily replaced.

 

    He'd closed down the shop for a few years, in the end. Hidden himself away. Crowley never did call on him the entire time, he'd thought he might. They could exchange apologies, and with every passing month, he worried less about having to find the words, his condition becoming rather self-evident. But Crowley still didn't come. Aziraphale gave birth in the bathtub, alone, without half the miracling he'd have liked to have used to ease the way. He'd spent a lot of time and worry hiding their child's existence from Heaven. Eventually at least, he no longer had to hide from the world.

 

    And then... _Crowley_. Walking into a _church_ for him, and Aziraphale thought that he might be angry, or hurt, seeing him again after so long apart. All he'd felt was relief. Happiness. _Love_. All the love they'd pretended wasn't there, it was. It is.

 

    Crowley's car is a very nice one, older but in fine condition. Very him, in a way perhaps the newer models aren't. He hops out when they pull up to the shop, and opens Aziraphale's door, and he's wincing terribly still just being on his feet.

 

    "Come in?" Aziraphale says, without thinking. "I'll get you a tub of water to soak your feet in, and a glass of wine. Least I can do."

 

    "Yeah." Crowley nods. "I-- yeah."

 

    They go up to the flat above the shop, and Aziraphale barely gets the door open before he's assaulted with kisses.

 

    "You're home! I was so worried-- it wasn't supposed to take long and then there were bombers, and I didn't know what I'd do if you didn't come home and I had to wait!"

 

    "Hush, hush, sweeting..." He leans up to kiss his child's forehead in return. Not a child in human years now, of course, and by all appearances a youth of twenty or so, but for an angel, still so impossibly young. "Of course I'm home. And if anything had happened to me, you know I would always come back to you in time."

 

    "Who's this?" Crowley asks, his voice tight.

 

    "Oh--" Aziraphale's face heats. After all this time, he has no idea how to explain... what to say. If Crowley even wants a child, and if he ever did, surely he would want to be there for the formative years... "Er, yes. Crowley, this is Emmanuel. Emmanuel, sweet, this is-- this is Anthony J Crowley, we-- we've known each other a very long time. He got me out of some trouble back there, actually, I've brought him up to heal him."

 

    "Nice to meet you. I never get to meet anyone daddy knows." He beams, shaking Crowley's hand. They look so alike, perhaps Aziraphale won't have to say... Emmanuel is so lithe, he has Crowley's jawline, Crowley's nose. Bright ginger hair prone to a curl. Aziraphale's smile, Aziraphale's eyes, a bit of Aziraphale's softness here and there, but... but enough of Crowley. 

 

    "Yeah. Likewise, I'm sure. Angel, if there's a chair...?"

 

    "Oh! Yes, of course, right this way! I'll take care of that straight away, I'll get you taken care of."

 

    "If that's all right."

 

    "Of course." He takes Crowley's arm, steering him towards the leather armchair which Crowley had bought him, back when they'd... back then. He'd claimed it was a selfish act, because they were spending so much time at Aziraphale's place and Aziraphale hadn't put much furniture in his flat aside from even more bookshelves. Once upon a time, he hadn't needed more than this, and his bed. He'd sat in Crowley's lap in that chair, when they would move upstairs from the back room of the shop, still tipsy. They would cuddle there a while, kiss softly, before sobering up and going to bed. But if Crowley assigns any special meaning to the chair, he doesn't show it.

 

    Aziraphale pours him a glass of wine first, and then goes to get a washtub, to put the kettle on and to fill the tub partway with cool water, to add hot to. Having a task keeps him from spiraling into anxieties, but only just. Emmanuel drifts after him to the kitchen.

 

    "Be a lamb, dear, and... and see if there isn't anything we can fix for a late supper, while I get Crowley taken care of?"

 

    "I will. What... what is Mister Crowley? He's not an angel, is he?"

 

    "He was, sweeting, once."

 

    Emmanuel nods, and sets to checking about the kitchen for the makings of that supper, without pressing the question.

 

    Crowley's shoes and socks have vanished, when Aziraphale returns to the little sitting room-- now fully furnished, he'd wanted to give their child a proper home. He sighs gratefully as he dips his feet into the water, and Aziraphale pulls a footstool up to sit nearby him, towel draped over one knee, jar of ointment in hand and a roll of bandages in his pocket.

 

    "I didn't think I'd be intruding on your... happy home." He says, voice still tight-- not just from the pain, now. "He looked glad to have you back in one piece. Guess it's a good thing I came along when I did."

 

    "I was certainly-- Seeing you again, I--"

 

    "No. Don't. Not now."

 

    Ah. Yes, well, he could have expected. He hangs his head, silent. Too many years gone by, and it's not as if Crowley has ever been comfortable with his gratitude...

 

    "Handsome. Your, ah..."

 

    "Oh, yes. He's beautiful, isn't he?" Aziraphale brightens. "I'm so glad-- I'm so glad you're _here_ , Crowley. It felt _wrong_ to me, not to be able even to introduce you."

 

    "Did it?" He sneers, and Aziraphale's hopeful heart shatters.

 

    "Of course. Don't you want to know him?"

 

    "Not particularly." He blows out a hard sigh. "It's your life, angel. It's been your life, I don't expect to have any rights to it now, but I wish you'd given me a warning in the car, before I let myself think things were... No, my mistake, even without--" He flaps a hand towards the kitchen. "It's not like we could just pick up like nothing ever happened. I mean he does seem awfully young."

 

    "I don't know what other age you could expect him to be." He blinks. "Age being what it is for him, it's rather a jumble. He's not yet a century, that's coming up. But I suppose you're not interested--"

 

    " _Not yet a century_?" Crowley hisses, leaning towards him. " _Fuck's_ sake, Aziraphale, just how old _is_ he? _Not yet a century_? What are you _thinking_?"

 

    "He's _seventy-nine_ , Crowley, _obviously_." He hisses right back.

 

    "A seventy-nine year old angel, that's a bloody _child_!"

 

    " _Half_ -angel, and I _know_ that."

 

    "Half-angel?" Crowley's brow furrows, and he opens his mouth to speak only to be interrupted by Emmanuel himself coming in with sandwiches.

 

    "Will you eat something, Mister Crowley?"

 

    Crowley nods dumbly, taking one of the sandwiches and swallowing it whole.

 

    "Dear, I wish you wouldn't." Aziraphale clucks. Crowley picks up a second sandwich, but doesn't move to eat it.

 

    "Sorry." He says, contrite, and he makes no protest-- nor sign of noticing-- when Aziraphale lifts one of his feet to check the sole for visible damage-- and though the scales there would protect him from ordinary damage, the holiness of the consecrated ground has hurt him in ways they can do nothing for. "Emmanuel... sorry if I was... terse, when we were introduced. Had a very long night. Thanks for..." He gestures with the second sandwich.

 

    "You can call me Lew, everyone does. Most everyone."

 

    "Lew? How do you get that from Emmanuel? Backwards, I guess."

 

    "From Llewellyn." He laughs. "Emmanuel James Llewellyn Fell."

 

    Crowley quirks an eyebrow.

 

    "Those names were very fashionable at the time." Aziraphale says. Having looked at both of Crowley's feet, he's decided the best course of action is to let him soak a little longer.

 

    "Very human name for an angel." He chuckles softly. "Lew, then. You can... you can call me whatever you like. You don't have to call me 'mister'."

 

    "Do you go by Tony ever?"

 

    "No. You can be the only one who calls me that. If you want. Aziraphale says you're seventy-nine."

 

    Emmanuel nods, settling onto the sofa with his own supper. "Only just. And I work in the shop downstairs, although... we don't do a lot of business. And I volunteer at the hospital, but I'm not to do any miracles. Daddy's afraid _they'll_ notice. And I'm not really supposed to _be_."

 

    " _Hush_ , sweet, of _course_ you're meant to be. It's..."

 

    "Ineffable?" He and Crowley say in unison, in the same teasing tone.

 

    " _Yes_. But the other angels wouldn't understand. And I don't want you getting hurt!"

 

    "Your father's right. They don't go in for shades of grey upstairs. Case in point, me." He gestures, only to realize he has a sandwich in his hand. "Here, open up."

 

    Aziraphale does. After all, his hands are still damp and even if he dried them, he's been handling Crowley's blistered feet, it doesn't put one in the mood to handle finger food. One hand around Crowley's calf, he leans in and lets himself be fed, and for a moment things feel the way they once did, when they used to pretend the world was theirs and they could be together...

 

    "Will you stay the night?" Emmanuel bounces once in his seat, breaking the quiet. "It's so late and all! And you can stay in my room."

 

    "Crowley will take my bed if he wants to stay." Aziraphale says, much more evenly than he'd thought he could manage. "I don't really sleep, after all. Er-- that is-- well, if he wants."

 

    "I want." He nods. "If I'm no trouble."

 

    "None at all." He lifts Crowley's foot once more, patting it dry as gently as possible before applying the ointment, the bandages. "You go on to bed, dear, you've sat up waiting so late. I'll take care of our guest and-- and you can get to know each other better over breakfast."

 

    "All right." Emmanuel rises, and bends over to kiss the side of Aziraphale's head. "N'night. I'm glad you're home safe, I couldn't... I couldn't go to bed until you were." He turns to Crowley, holding out his hand again, for a firm, warm handshake. "Thank you, Mister-- Tony. Very much."

 

    "Been doing it since long before you were alive." Crowley manages a smile, with just a little wince interrupting it, as Aziraphale tends to his burns. "I'll keep on doing it, you can count on that. Whenever I'm needed. I'll see you in the morning."

 

    Emmanuel takes his leave, and Crowley removes his glasses, turning to Aziraphale, naked emotion in his eyes.

 

    "So he's..."

 

    "Yours." Aziraphale nods.

 

    "I never knew."

 

    "No, I suppose you wouldn't. I never got the chance to tell you." He blinks away tears and focuses on Crowley's feet-- meeting his eyes just now is too much. Once the bandages are in place, he carefully pulls one of his own socks over, a warm, woolly one. "You broke my heart, Crowley. I came to the park thinking I would find a way to tell you I was... with child, and you... I know I also said things I didn't mean that day, but the very thought of you with holy water, when I'd only just discovered I was carrying your child, the thought of something happening to you, the thought that if I provided you with it and there was any kind of accident, it would be as if I'd killed you. And our child, Crowley, I don't know what his weaknesses are, I don't know whose nature is strongest in him, where these things are concerned... I was frightened. I was hurt. I was housebound, once I started to show, and every day I thought 'maybe he'll come', and you never did."

 

    "I thought you wouldn't want to see me again, after... how it all went. I thought... I had no idea. I-- I wish I'd been there. Who did you go to?"

 

    "Go to?"

 

    "When the time came. To have him."

 

    "I didn't. Crowley, there was no one else I could trust. I didn't know how he would-- if it would be obvious, if his aura would seem... I didn't know what he would be like. An angelic pregnancy is rare enough I couldn't think of anyone I knew who'd gone through it, but...  this? What if I thought I could trust someone and I was wrong? What if I lost him? He was all I had left, with you gone. Not knowing if you'd ever come back-- not knowing if you could. Crowley, the last time we spoke, you were dead set on obtaining something that could end your existence, I--" He shakes his head. "Excuse me, I've got to get rid of this water."

 

    He takes a bit of extra time puttering about, after emptying the washtub in the kitchen sink. Scrubs up and puts the kettle back on for... something. Tea, perhaps, or just something to do. Time to compose himself.

 

    When he comes back in, Crowley is as he left him. Sitting there in his chair, where he should have sat all these years, wearing Aziraphale's coziest socks over his bandaged feet. Slouched, though there's a tension in his face, a worry in his naked eyes.

 

    He pats his thigh, breath held. He releases it only once Aziraphale is in his lap, arms around his neck, cheek to cheek.

 

    "Oh, _Crowley_..." He sobs, and holds on tight.

 

    "I'm so sorry, love." Crowley strokes his hair, his back. "I wish I'd known. I wish I'd been here. I just... I wanted to protect us. Protect you. If they came up after us for being together, I wanted to be able to defend us, and... and I hated leaving before dawn like you were some dirty secret, but they... they'd have taken some pleasure in hurting you. As your people would me. I thought if I had a weapon that would really stop them in their tracks, maybe... maybe we could buy someone's silence, or-- I don't know. Maybe we could actually spend a night together."

 

    "Maybe we can. They... My people, I mean, they don't watch me so closely nowadays. It's all the work I've had to put into keeping Emmanuel a secret, I suppose, they leave us alone. They might not notice, us. And... maybe yours won't?"

 

    "They don't care too much as a rule, as long as the job gets done, but I worry about keeping you safe. And the kid... my kid, I... He doesn't know who I am."

 

    "I didn't know if you'd want him to. You could tell him, or we could tell him. In the morning."

 

    "I'd like that. Maybe you should break the news, but I'd like it if... I missed so much of his childhood. Almost all of it."

 

    "Yes, but you have eternity to get to know him as he is. To see who he'll grow into. He's so like you sometimes, Crowley..."

 

    "What does he know about me? I mean-- about his other father?" Crowley nuzzles at Aziraphale's jaw. "What have you told him?"

 

    "That I lost the love of my life, before he was born. That the last time we saw each other was in the park. That... that I never got the chance to tell you. And that I hoped you were alive, somewhere, so that he could meet you. That you're a demon. He might suspect, I suppose, but either way... in the morning we'll talk."

 

    "I don't know what to tell him... about why I wasn't here, all those years. I don't know what to tell you. I thought you were done with me. I slept most of the time we were apart, I didn't mean to sleep that long, just... there was nothing else I wanted to do, if you wouldn't have me. I'd wake up, roll over, go back to sleep... Sometimes I actually got out of bed, tried to do something, but always I just... I didn't know what the point of it was. And then the war, and I got a commendation for starting it that I never asked for, and I thought I might as well... dunno. Fix it. And-- you'll think it's stupid."

 

    "I won't."

 

    "I thought if I could fix it, you might-- no, it is stupid."

 

    "It's not." Aziraphale draws him into a kiss. "Crowley, it's not. I've missed you so."

 

    "And I you. And then I knew you were in trouble, always know when you're in trouble, and I... And there you were, beautiful as when we left off. And I realized I'd been stupid. And I hoped maybe we both had and it wouldn't matter."

 

    "Yes, that's usually the way, isn't it?" He laughs, and kisses Crowley again. Again. Again. "Stay."

 

    "As if you could get rid of me."


	21. The Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Oli, and inspired by this thing of absolute beauty:  
> https://gingerhaole.tumblr.com/post/186665077217/crowleysangel-put-the-call-out-for-chubby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so many things I was going to write and I'm so behind on replying to lovely comments but... well.

    "I know just the thing, you know." Madame Tracy chirps, swooping in to take Aziraphale's arm. Remarkably confident, to just walk up and nab an angel, knowing what he is. More than anyone else, save Crowley, does-- being in her head meant she'd seen the shape of him, the Aziraphale that doesn't fit neatly into human form. In his case, still remarkably like a human, but not one. "For your young man."

 

    Ah. Surely she understands that Crowley is not. Not young, nor strictly speaking, a man. Crowley is... his, a little. More than he was. It's a bit slow, a bit awkward, but there's an understanding now, a freedom to start taking those steps forward.

 

    Perhaps she doesn't remember. Even he and Crowley remember the Armageddon-that-wasn't hazily now, perhaps she's not sure how she knows them now. Perhaps she doesn't understand, even if she'd understood it all then.

 

    He lets her take him up the block, and into a lingerie shop-- not what he'd expected, but by the time he formulates a protest, he's already inside, and he doesn't want to be rude in front of the shop girls who greet Tracy so enthusiastically.

 

    "Kitty, I think you'd better help my friend, here." She says, putting him in touch with one of the two girls-- short and round, and rather demure-looking for a woman who sells lingerie. Ginger hair in a professional bun, reassuringly gentle and businesslike when she turns to him.

 

    "Are you shopping for someone else, or for yourself?" She asks.

 

    "I'm not entirely sure..." Aziraphale looks to Madame Tracy.

 

    "For yourself, dear." She titters. Somehow this is less frightening than the prospect of trying to buy lingerie for Crowley, when they have yet to engage in physical intimacies, beyond a bit of hand holding and some rather shy kisses. But for himself... well, that's not so frightening. He's worn stockings before, and frills. He could buy something for himself and in time, if Crowley were to see him in it, that would be fine.

 

    "For myself, then." He says.

 

    "He's got a young man." Tracy adds.

 

    "He's not--" He begins, but the girl, Kitty, keeps her gentle-and-businesslike demeanor firmly in place. "He's not _young_ , I mean, he's the same age I am."

 

    "He's handsome." Another interjection from Tracy, before she and the other shopgirl bustle off together.

 

    Kitty does smile at that. "Would you like a cup of tea, Mister...?"

 

    "Fell. Thank you. Two sugars, if it's no trouble." He says, because he doesn't think asking for three or four makes for a good first impression, and he does want to be polite.

 

    She leads him over to a settee with a little table, between a changing room and a little station with an electric kettle and a few waiting china cups. "Do you have any idea what you'd like? Or what your gentleman would like?"

 

    "I don't know. I've never been... sexually alluring before. I'm not sure it's _me_." He admits, casting a wary eye over the mannequin in the black leather. "Miss Potts didn't really... prepare me for this, I have no ideas at all."

 

    "Anyone can be alluring." She hands him his cup, giving him a once-over. "Why don't I pull some suggestions, and you can see if you form an opinion."

 

    "Stockings." He says. "I-- I would like stockings. That's all I know."

 

    "Well now I know I can find you a pair of those."

 

    He isn't left waiting long, and the settee is comfortable and the tea pleasant. When the shopgirl returns, she's dragging a lightweight garment rack with a variety of lacy things, and carrying a basket full of pairs of stockings.

 

    The stockings feel like a safe starting point. He rules out the black net pair straight off, and considers some others.

 

    "These, at least." He says, taking the plain white silky pair, no special adornment. "I'll consider the blue ones, and the ones with the lace, the other white ones. Oh-- now these with the bows say they stay up on their own, but I think the red is a bit racy for me..."

 

    "I can check the back for another color in your size, or I can order a pair to come in if we haven't got something you like in stock." She moves a couple of pieces in red to one end of the garment rack. "We'll call this the no pile, and we'll start by looking for something that will suit the pair you know you want. You'll need suspenders for those, there are some different styles you can look at."

 

    She hands him one, a white lace belt, six points where the stockings clip in. Another in satin with mesh panels, which seems a bit more constricting. And then she brings out a third and he knows in an instant. Soft fabric with wide ruffles, pink ribbons and bows... and it looks to be the right fit, when he holds it up. He turns it over in his hands a few times, already feeling attached to the idea. Would Crowley like it? Even if Madame Tracy is wrong about that, he will like himself in it.

 

    "Good choice. Would you like to see the other pieces in the set?"

 

    "If you think-- That is-- Oh, it won't be silly on me, will it?"

 

    "No, I don't think that at all." She brings out the set, and he'd assumed he wouldn't want a brassiere-- it wouldn't fit properly, it would certainly be silly rather than attractive. But this isn't some structured thing of cups and bands, it's blousy and voluminous, more pink ribbon bows, more ruffles. He could wear this. It reminds him of old times... it might do for Crowley as well. The panty is plainer-- it makes sense, the suspender belt is where the adornment is. Or so he thinks, until he sees the back, the keyhole cutout and the single big pink bow, to show down below the ruffles of the belt.

 

    "Oh my..." He blushes, and then he nods. "Yes, yes, the whole set."

 

    There's a peignoir as well, full sleeves that gather close at the wrists with a ruffle, more ruffles all along the hem. With a pink satin sash. Short, quite short, it would fall about mid-thigh, perhaps not quite halfway down. Lightweight. All of it so pleasant to the touch. And a nightie, a good bit shorter than the robe, pink bows at the shoulders, gathered and flared, a ruffle at the front just like the little top, and around the bottom. He tries the things on, in the roomy and well-mirrored changing stall, finds himself admiring the curves of his body. Soft... a bit jiggly here and there, yes. But he likes it. It's _his_ body, and these things do suit it.

 

    "I hope you and your gentleman friend will enjoy it." Kitty smiles at him over the register, and hands him his purchases in a very pretty paper bag.

 

    "You'll certainly know if we do-- I expect I'll be back in to buy more, if he likes them." He beams.

 

    He expects that to be the end of it. He'll go home, he'll wear his new things now and then, just for himself for now, and then when he and Crowley are ready, for him... Only it's not the end of it. Madame Tracy takes him another couple of streets over, insists he hold onto his purchases, and then they wind up...

 

    _Oh dear_. They wind up in a photography studio.

 

    "Miss Tracy, getting new shots?" The photographer asks, kissing her hand.

 

    "Desmond." She smiles warmly, and motions Aziraphale forward to shake the man's hand. "A friend of mine needs something to interest his young man."

 

    "Oh, I really--"

 

    "Ah, well come and have a look at the portfolio. You know, there's nothing to be embarrassed about, lots of people get some tasteful boudoir shots done as a gift for a lover. It's all about what you're comfortable with."

 

    "I'm really not sure I am." Aziraphale glances back to Madame Tracy, who gives him an encouraging wave.

 

    Despite his apprehension, he lets her friend Desmond show him the portfolio. He'd had expectations, he'd imagined something smutty and highly uncomfortable, but what he finds is just... people. Yes, people in varying states of undress. but people. Men, women, perhaps some who are both or neither, with personalities. Some with costume pieces, some looking sultry and others laughing. Slowly, Aziraphale loosens up, and by the end he finds himself nodding.

 

    "I've never done this before." He says, hugging his bag to his chest. "I hardly know what he'd want to see."

 

    "Well, pick out a package, and then we'll go back in the studio and play around until you're happy."

 

    Money being little object to Aziraphale, he picks one of the more generous packages. They start by establishing a rapport and easing Aziraphale into the whole thing. A couple of cheeky shots of him removing his tie, opening his collar.

 

    "How long have you been together?" Desmond asks, as Aziraphale removes his waistcoat.

 

    "Oh... not long at all-- well-- We've known each other ages, but... I never really dreamed we'd wind up, well... _happy_." He smiles, thoughts drifting to the night before, to Crowley sitting up with him, to sharing a bottle of wine, Crowley taking the book from his hand and reading one of the poems out loud. Crowley kissing him goodnight before falling asleep there on his sofa. He hears the shutter click, and laughs softly, self-conscious.

 

    "What is he like?"

 

    "He's _wonderful_. He's a sweetheart, really. Well, he'd fancy himself a 'bad boy', but he's kind. Clever. He likes to tease, but he's so generous and so attentive... He loves plants, he's got a real gift with them, and he's... he's well-traveled, always curious. We go to the theatre, and concerts. I know him so well, and yet now it feels as though there are so many new things to learn... but when I'm with him, the world is brighter, and I feel... safe. I never did before, and now, we go walking through the park and he offers me his arm and I feel safe."

 

    "What does he like about you? What should we bring out in these pictures? Aside from that smile, of course."

 

    "Oh-- oh, I don't hardly know." Aziraphale blushes.

 

    "Got an adventurous side, do you travel together?"

 

    "I'm more of a homebody, though we have done. I mean, we don't normally, we didn't before, but sometimes we'd wind up traveling to the same places and we would fall in together. We talk about the theatre, we argue about art." He chuckles. "We go out to dinner. He-- he likes to see me enjoy things. Food. Likes to tempt me into things. I don't really know what he likes about me physically... it's all so new. I hope most things."

 

    "If you're not sure what his favorite features are, why don't you think about what you like about yourself, and show that off to him? Show him the side of you that's confident and sexy, introduce him to that new side. Maybe that'll get him talking about what he thinks is sexy-- or maybe it'll give him some brand new ideas."

 

    Aziraphale's not sure about 'confident and sexy', but... well, hadn't he liked his body, trying on the lingerie? Hadn't he felt beautiful? Touchable?

   

    "Perhaps I should just... bite the bullet and change?" He says.

 

    "Behind the curtain there, take your time. You can wear as much or as little as you like, I see all kinds. All shapes, all ages, and every single one of them comes out looking like a sex bomb, no doubt about it."

 

    He tries the nightie first, with the stockings and all, perches on the edge of the bed where his earlier pictures had been so tame. Between the stockings and the ruffled hem of the nightie, there's a flash of thigh. He can't quite look at the camera, finds himself giggling nervously and hiding his face in one hand, but with a moment to compose himself, he manages to give Desmond his profile, and so long as he isn't looking at the camera, he feels capable enough. He changes from nightie to the bralette top, and the peignoir over the top, stands beside the bed in profile with one knee resting up on the mattress, with the peignoir slipping down from one shoulder, and at Desmond's direction, he angles his head a little differently, stands a little straighter, lifts his chin just so until the shutter clicks furiously and he feels a blaze of satisfaction. He ditches the peignoir and turns away, showing off the keyhole in the panty. Another profile shot, one arm stretched up over his head, hips canted to one side.

 

    "Are my seams straight?" He asks. "How about the bow?"

 

    "Perfect." Desmond assures him, taking the shot. "Your man's going to be very happy..."

 

    "Oh, do you think so?" Aziraphale turns, his smile lighting up, one hand at his heart. "I hope he will..."

 

    "Absolutely. Can I get you kneeling on the bed for a front view? I think... something that really shows off the thighs, and the bows. And maybe your face?"

 

    Aziraphale nods, allowing himself to be directed. He still feels a bit shy, can't help ducking his head as he poses for the camera head-on, but when he's told to simply think about his partner rather than the camera, he lifts his eyes. Still shy, but Desmond seems happy-- he pauses to come and show Aziraphale the shot, how soft and coy he looks.

 

    "Now that's an innocent ready to be tempted, if that's what he likes." Desmond grins. "What do you think?"

 

    "I think that's certainly what he likes. You've no idea." Aziraphale laughs. "I-- I want to try one more. A moment?"

 

    "Of course." Desmond nods and waves him back towards the changing area when he hesitates.

 

    He hadn't envisioned himself removing the panty at all, and he immediately wraps himself in the peignoir but by the time he reaches the bed, something about shedding it emboldens him. He settles back into a similar pose to the last-- not everything bared to the camera, thanks to the angle he sits at, the positioning of his thigh. Still, it's more than enough of a view to suggest that he _is_ bare, to suggest that if Crowley were to have the live show, he would be free to come and part Aziraphale's thighs and see the rest. He lifts his head this time and smiles for the camera, no longer worrying if it will be silly or too much, but certain that it will be appreciated.

 

    "Oh, hold there..." Desmond holds up a hand, stepping away from his camera after a few shots. "Got an idea, hang on."

 

    He rushes back to his desk, digging around a bit only to come up with a strawberry lollipop.

 

    "Ooh." Aziraphale accepts it. "Oh, I like strawberry-- actually, it's his favorite, C-- my Anthony's, I mean. Well, we sort of tend to have a lot of the same favorites. Sorry, how did you want me?"

 

    "Just rest it against your lips and give me a come-hither look." Desmond directs. Which Aziraphale tries to do, though he's not quite certain about 'come-hither'.

 

    The shutter keeps sounding even as he gets distracted by the sweet itself, and his enjoyment of it is interrupted by a chipper 'all done' and permission to put his clothes back on. Lollipop firmly in mouth, he gets his lingerie packed back away and his clothes on, and after he wraps up with Desmond, he and Madame Tracy have a very pleasant lunch out in the area, at a cafe he recommends.

 

    "The least I can do, dear lady, for your continued help." He insists, picking up the tab.

 

    When he does get his finished photographs, he spares them a peek-- he'd approved the shots, of course, but seeing them all printed up and glossy does feel different. He hadn't wanted anything touched up-- he hadn't needed anything touched up, not anything about himself. He'd wanted them to look-- and Desmond had agreed-- exactly as the real thing, a promise of what's to come rather than anything prettied up into false advertising. He thinks it was the right choice, seeing them, but looking at himself like this... he feels good about himself, and he feels intensely embarrassed.

 

    He slips them all into a glossy plain white box, does it up with a pink satin bow, and spends a miracle to have the whole thing appear on Crowley's desk. They have a dinner date, and he's not sure whether he hopes Crowley will find it before, or after.

 

    He doesn't have to worry about whether or not Crowley's found the package for long-- two hours before they're set to meet, he strides into the shop, past two customers, vaults over the counter, and pulls Aziraphale into the deepest kiss he's ever been given.

 

    "You got my gift, I take it?" He asks, a little dizzy. He gives a brief glance over to where his customers had been, but after that display it seems they've left without trying to buy anything. Perhaps he ought to encourage Crowley to kiss him like that at work more often...

 

    "When someone else performs a miracle in my flat, angel, I notice." Crowley whispers in his ear, squeezing handfuls of his sides, barely holding onto the restraint necessary to keep his hands from migrating down below Aziraphale's waist. "Liked the outfit."

 

    "I still have it. You can see it, any time."

 

    "After dinner?"

 

    "Yes. Any time you like."

 

    "Got a little something for you, too, if you want to reach into my pocket."

 

    "Oh... oh, Crowley, _really_." Aziraphale's face goes scarlet, but he lets Crowley guide his hand, finding a heart-shaped lollipop sticking out of one pocket. "Really?"

 

    "I liked that one. Could just imagine the noises." He cups Aziraphale's chin. "Any chance of me getting a live recreation later?"

 

    "Oh, I think there's every chance." He sighs, leaning up to kiss Crowley gently, and pocketing the lollipop in his waistcoat. "Which did you like best? The lingerie? I'll wear however much or little as you like."

 

    "Oh, angel..." Crowley groans, pulling him closer, pressing up against him. " _Oh_ , _angel_... Liked it all. The pants, with that little peek. Suspender belt, and those stockings... your thighs, Aziraphale, the thoughts I've been having about those thighs..."

 

    "What kind of thoughts?" He licks his lips, insides feeling all fluttery at the very idea.

 

    "I'll show you, after dinner." Crowley promises, lips brushing Aziraphale's ear, voice low and dark and sweet.

 

    "Or..."

 

    "Or?"

 

    "Before dinner?" Aziraphale suggests. After all, it's not as if they rely on reservations-- the restaurant would still be there.

 

    "Before dinner." Crowley nods.

 

    By the time they get out of bed again, the restaurant is closed for the night, but neither of them much minds-- it will be there tomorrow night, after all, but there are things too good to wait for.


	22. That Blessed Arrangement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For this prompt:  
> AU where Crowley and Aziraphale are married since Eden (or Rome, at the latest but preferably Eden). But a celestial marriage differs from the human version a lot. So when the end of the world doesn't happen, the kidnapping still happens but instead, it is more "so when did you marry the demon/angel?" because of a giant pool of bets. Aziraphale and Crowley both think they are referring to the human concept of marriage and not the celestial marriage. Misunderstandings everywhere. 
> 
> Just a little quick something!

    "You've felt it, haven't you?" Crowley asks, his lips at Aziraphale's throat. He feels him gasp, he feels him quiver in his arms. "You've felt the pull between us as long as I have..."

 

    Aziraphale whimpers, and clutches at him. He has, he has, he has... He felt it that very first time, in Eden, and he had known... He'd known if they chose to, they could... they could _mean_ something to each other, a marriage of their complete selves. Even with Crowley being a demon, they were compatible, down to the core. 

 

    Since Eden, how many times have they been drawn to each other? How many times has he sheltered Crowley from the rain? How many times has Crowley teased something out of him, fanned a spark within his chest? And how many times has he tried to ignore it?

 

    Enough.

 

    “Crowley… could you truly want me forever?” He pushes him back a moment, to meet his eyes. “I don’t want to be some… _trifle_.”

 

    “I don’t mean to trifle with you.”

 

    “Do you mean to _marry_ me?” He presses. He hadn’t realized until the word passed his lips that it’s what he’s ached for, it’s what he’s been wanting since that very first time that Crowley drew near. The moment he looked into those wide, golden eyes and a part of him _knew_ … Since that moment there has been a void in him, and Crowley is the key to it. 

 

    “Yes.” Crowley whispers, and takes his hand. Palm to palm a long moment, gaze held. 

 

    “Crowley… it will be dangerous. It will be hard. They won’t let us simply be together… we may be parted, will be forced to keep separate dwellings… I should never have asked for your company, only--”

 

    “Only it’s all you want. All you ever want.” 

 

    He nods, his free hand sliding into Crowley’s hair. “Make me yours, then. Forever.”

 

    It’s a miracle his voice doesn’t shake, and yet… it wouldn’t feel this way if it wasn’t possible, to marry himself to a demon. It couldn’t feel this way. 

 

    Crowley kisses him, and something in his chest cracks open. He flows out, and Crowley flows in. With a soft sound, Crowley’s wings fill the room and blanket him in the softest night, and Crowley pulls him up from where he’d been flat on his back, so that his own might unfold, so that they might meet. More than once now, he’s used a wing to shelter Crowley-- from the very first rain, from later storms, but they’ve never _touched_ until now, until physically and spiritually they find themselves wrapping around each other until there’s no space and no difference, until they tumble through each other like water. 

 

    And then it’s done, they’re irretrievably one. No matter how far apart they should find each other, they’re one. 

 

    “Aziraphale…” Crowley cups his cheek, everything about him so soft, so tender… so much it aches. 

 

    “Crowley.” Aziraphale reaches up to do the same. 

 

    He has known many celestial marriages to be… this, no more than this. And yet he craves a physical consummation. Crowley kisses him again, deep, tendrils of his being snaking in once more, and Aziraphale can _feel_ that he wants the same. 

 

    He pushes back with his own desires, and feels the way Crowley’s being receives him, feels the smile against his lips when Crowley gets the message.

 

    Their first time making love is fumbling and strange, but it feels good. It feels good when they bleed together into one even as their bodies fail to move in perfect concert, and then it gets a little easier, they find a rhythm together, they finish together. 

 

    They do what they can to stay close to each other, after that. They do what they can to see each other whenever possible. They steal nights in rooms one or the other lets, in this city or that. They steal rooms in tents, off away from any city at all. They make love, and partake in all the parts of marriage they can-- they groom each other’s wings, they meld into each other in essence, they keep feathers which come loose from each other. 

 

    “Someday.” Crowley whispers, as he holds Aziraphale in his arms. He should have crafted him a nest by now, a bower spun from the sheer force of his will. Between angels, such things are simple-- they needn’t be a _home_ , angels have no need for _homes_ , they have all of Heaven. Rather, a couple’s nest is a small, quiet place to be alone. To rest and reaffirm connection, before going on to work at their separate duties. A place to return to, but not a place to dine or to sleep, to keep possessions. 

 

    It’s a permanent place, though, and a personal place, not like rented rooms. 

 

    “Someday.” Aziraphale whispers back, though he fears discovery, fears what they will do to Crowley if they find them living together. 

 

    “I would have given you a haven if…”

 

    “Shh. You _are_ my haven.”

 

    It’s true, and truer than it could be of even the finest marriage-nest in Heaven. Now that they are one, no matter how far apart they are, he can feel Crowley, and Crowley can feel him. If one of them is ever in trouble, the other is there. Crowley appears when Aziraphale is in need of rescuing, Aziraphale materializes when Crowley finds himself cold and aching to shield him from the storm.

 

    When they meet in Crowley’s tent, he creates an approximation. Swathes of dark, heavy fabric keep the outside world at bay a little, and they rest in a hammock that isn’t exactly physically possible, and with a wave of his hand, Crowley creates little points of light, swirls of color.

 

    “I would have made something like this.” He says. “A place to float together and look at the stars. A place to clear your head. That’s what I thought, when I made them… that I would make something beautiful to look at, and if I fell in love, I would create a little nest where my beloved could look at the stars and be at peace. Soppy, I know, but then…”

 

    “Wonderful, I think.” Aziraphale sighs.

 

    “What would you have made?”

 

    “Oh, I wouldn’t. I would have let you. And then… I’d have added something for you. A blanket, to keep you warm.” He smiles, and spreads it over them, impossibly soft and thick. “Chimes, perhaps, something soft and peaceful.”

 

    A wave of his hand and they hang outside the tent, and the sound of them filters in gently. 

 

    “I’ve changed since being on Earth with you.” Crowley admits.

 

    “And I as well, with you.”

 

    “No, I mean… I mean before, when I thought this up, when I imagined someone I didn’t yet know to share it with me… I didn’t know myself yet.” He waves his hand again, and the tent fills with night-blooming flowers, sweet scent thick around them as the blossoming vines cover every inch of the ground around them. “I would surround you with fruit and flowers. With a garden.”

 

    Aziraphale reaches down and finds the small bag with his few possessions, resting there among the flowers beneath their hammock. He brings out the dried fruit, and they feed each other, silent a while. There’s nothing else to say-- they would do so much for each other, but this is what they have. Fleeting moments, no fixed and permanent place to go to. 

 

\---/-/---

 

    In time, they settle in London-- they may travel for work now and then, but they have their permanent home.

 

    Homes.

 

    It isn’t like a celestial marriage-nest, no, but then, they’re not like other marriages. Earth is their home, and they’ve both come to do things the way the locals do in ways neither side would understand.

 

    Rather than capturing memories in crystalline form to hang around their shared space, that Aziraphale would be able to bask in his love even when he might be on assignment far away, Crowley fills his flat with souvenirs-- with art, with things, with physical man-made ‘memories’ of their life together. With a vase Aziraphale once eyed appreciatively in a marketplace, with a scrap of lace under glass from a blouse he’d once worn, with a statue that…

 

    Well.

 

    And he fills it with plants, and he projects starlight on the dark walls of his bedroom when Aziraphale spends the night there. He makes it so much more than a mere nest, if not quite a home.

 

    Aziraphale makes his own home as soft and comfortable as possible, makes it warm, fills it with blankets and cushions and places to sit in the sunlight, with little pieces of art here and there because he knows Crowley likes art, likes soft and sunny places to sleep, likes to lazily lap at his wine and listen to him read sometimes.

 

    Between the two places, they have everything they need, except the freedom to be together.

 

\---/-/---

 

    “How long? How long have you and the _angel_ been... _married_?” Beelzebub sneers.

 

    “We’ve seen pictures.” One of the other demons adds, someone Aziraphale doesn’t know but has to pretend he does. As long as he’s wearing Crowley’s face. 

 

    “Pictures?” He squawks, scandalized. 

 

    “Of the two of you _talking_.” The demon says, chin thrust forward aggressively. “And _sitting_ together.”

 

    Dagon holds up one of the pictures-- he and Crowley are out in public, fully dressed, only touching where Crowley’s foot rests casually against his.

 

    “Don’t deny it.” She smiles-- or at least, she bares her teeth.

 

    “Ten-twenty.” Aziraphale blurts the date out, thinking about the first time they ever wrote a formal contract regarding any aspect of their relationship. They’d already been one in essence for some time, of course, but… well, surely the demons weren’t referring to a _celestial_ marriage-- surely they didn’t even think that to be possible.

 

\---/-/---

 

    “If you’re going to betray us for a demon, Aziraphale, you could do us the courtesy of answering a few questions.” Gabriel throws the handful of photos into Crowley’s lap-- most of them slide to the floor. 

 

    “Can I have a copy of that one?” He asks, doing his best to indicate with a nod which picture he liked best, the one of the two of them at a cafe, his own expression besotted behind dark glasses, Aziraphale digging into his dessert.

 

    The angels exchange looks, someone laughs softly-- Uriel doesn’t, Uriel looks as if she hasn’t laughed since the Great War. Crowley feels a strange and unexpected pang at that thought, and thinks that could have been him if it wasn’t for Aziraphale. If he hadn’t found the one being in creation there in the garden who could complete him and let him heal. 

 

    Gabriel tucks the picture into his waistcoat, with a smile that very clearly said he was not being truly friendly, not anymore. 

 

    “Thank you.”

 

    “How long?”

 

    “Hm?”

 

    “How long have you and the _demon_ been _married_?”

 

    “Twenty-ninth March.” Crowley blurts out. “Twenty fourteen.”

 

    “Don’t lie to us!” Uriel snaps, picking up one of the photos. “This picture is from the eighteen hundreds.”

 

    “This one’s from Mesopotamia.” The other angel-- Sandalphon? Someone Crowley vaguely remembers but never knew well-- taps at the floor next to it. “You’ve been cozy a long time, haven’t you?”

 

    “I think I know my own anniversary.” Crowley sniffs, in the most Aziraphale tone he can manage. That had been the day that the supposed humans Anthony J. Crowley and Ezra Fell were married, even if the legality of the marriage is debatable.

 

\---/-/---

 

    In the end, there are furious debates among grouped demons and angels alike. There is holy water, there is hellfire, and there is a frightened agreement to leave the happy couple _alone_.

 

    Between Heaven and Hell, no one is able to come to any agreement on whatever wagers had passed between them, as to the length of the marriage, but then, no one is willing to go after them to demand the truth.


End file.
